WILLARD WIGAN

As a kid, I lived in a fantasy world. I used to believe ants could talk. Not once did they say thank you.

I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn't hold me back and my teachers couldn't criticize me. That's how my career as a micro-sculptor began.

When I was a kid, I had trouble at school because of my learning disabilities. Carving is my body compensating for the lack of other skills.

My teacher said my brain was the size of a pea. He made my life miserable by singling me out in the classroom as a failure.

I became obsessed with making more and more tiny things. I think I was trying to find a way of compensating for my embarrassment at having learning difficulties: people had made me feel small so I wanted to show them how significant 'small' could be.

At home, when the heating pipes made noises, I imagined a tiny person was in there skipping with a rope. The fantasy world of tiny things became my escape.

I heard someone say that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. I decided to sculpt camels in a needle.

I was told I would become nothing. Now I am showing people how big nothing is.

When you work at a microscopic level, you have to control every part of your body movement - your fingertips, your joints, the pulse in your fingers.

There are times when I've inhaled my work. There are artworks still inside of me.

The microscopic world became my obsession.

At school I'd want to be so small that nobody could see me, and so my work depicts and reflects me - what it felt like to grow up in a world of pain.

People often swear the first time they see my work. I like that.

There is a child in all of us.

I'm like a mad professor, but without the spiky hair.

My work knocks people out; you've not seen the best of me yet.

Those that don't believe how small my work is should just come along and see it for themselves.

Flying helicopters is what I do for fun.

I always say that failure was my friend. I learned nothing at school, so I just lived in my own world.

I'm just honoring my mother's words. She always told me, 'The smaller your work, the bigger your name will become.'

We didn't have money for toys, so I made my own.

When I first heard that Barack Obama was going to be the first black president, I wanted to do the smallest, biggest tribute in history.

People find it very, very difficult to believe what I've done. Scientists have seen my work and they can't explain it. Even nano-scientists have seen it and been totally shocked. But if any man on Earth wants to challenge me, I'm ready. Bring it on.

The smaller your work, the bigger your name will become.