Works of art in the eye of a needle

WILLARD Wigan faces an unusual occupational hazard when creating his signature microsculptures - if he isn't careful, he might inhale one of them.

It happened once before, says the 56-year-old artist from Birmingham with a laugh. He was working on a microscopic version of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, he explains, when his phone rang. "You know, when you're so deep in concentration and your phone goes off, the first thing you do is sigh. So I sighed. And I saw Alice go up my nose, and she was gone."

Like most of the other works that Wigan is known for…