D PICASSO
chool. Teachers feared he was illiterate nd would amount to nothing in life. He regularly ran away from school and ound solace in his bedroom making art f such minute proportions that it could ot be seen with the naked eye. He believed if his work could not be een then it could not be criticised.
Leprechauns
He said: “When I was little I believed nts could talk, that there were little airies and leprechauns in the bottom of ur garden. I found my own world.” Spurred on by his mum Zetta, who died ged 63 in 1995, Willard’s works were caled down millimetre by millimetre. “Mum would always tell me if you go maller your name will get bigger,” said illard, who continued working on his reations in the evenings while holding own a day job as a factory worker in olverhampton. He had left school at 15 with no qualifications and could not even tell the time until he was 18.
Willard said: “It became an obsession, wanting to go smaller.”
In 2013 he used a microscopic flake of gold from a chain and a speck of his own stubble to create what was the world’s tiniest handmade sculpture – a gold motorcycle inside the eye of a needle.
The chopper bike was smaller than a human blood cell. But Willard was keen to do better and broke his own record by producing the baby in a hollowed-out strand of hair.
Willard’s continued goal remains quite simple – to inspire with his micro sculptures and to encourage others to live to their full potential.
His wise advice is: “Don’t underestimate something because it’s small and don’t underestimate someone who doesn’t have any qualifications.
“Sometimes people can have less but so much more.”
World’s Tiniest Masterpieces, Channel 4, next Sunday, 10.10pm.