Hold your breath, or risk inhaling millions of dollars worth of microscopic art.

In Birmingham, England artist Willard Wigan makes really really small art. Why? The learning disabled artist, who can neither read nor write, was often made to feel "small" as a child for his handicap. Now, he makes miniature art to show that "nothing could be everything."

Using a microscope and surgical knife, Wigan carves recognizable subjects such as Rodin's Thinker, Elvis, Santa Claus, Muhammad Ali and the cast of the Wizard of Oz (photo). Forcing figures to emerge from grains of rice, sand and sugar takes many tedious months — as does the process of painting each piece with a hair plucked from the corpse of fly. (All flies die of natural causes.) Wigan mounts the finished product on the head of a pin.

Does Wigan enjoy creating the barely visible? The answer is no. "I enjoy finishing it," he says. "Not working on it, no. It's misery. It's painstaking."

Catastrophe struck during the assembly of Alice in Wonderland when the centimeter-sized sculpture fell victim to the human respiratory system. "I was carrying her towards the needle, and then I looked again through the microscope and she'd gone," laments Wigan. "Disappeared. I think I inhaled her." Clearly, Alice was conceived (and consumed) on an off day. Generally Wigan works between breaths so as to avoid the slight hand tremor that a heartbeat makes.

In May, former tennis professional and business man, David Lloyd, purchased a 70 piece collection of Wigan's, which he then insured for 11.2 million pounds.