By Jeremy Miles
I run into some interesting characters in my line of work, and after more than 50 years of interviewing, there is very little that surprises me.
But even I raised an eyebrow when I chatted to record-breaking micro artist David A Lindon, who creates works so small they can’t even be seen with the naked eye. They have to be viewed under specially designed magnifiers for public viewing.
The extraordinary lengths he goes to produce images and sculptures that can fit inside the eye of a needle are truly amazing, not to mention potentially life-threatening.
“I tend to paint late at night and shut all the doors and windows to reduce the chance of any vibration from passing traffic,” he told me. But his preparations go a lot further than that.
Working by hand under a specialist microscope also requires an incredibly steady hand. In order to achieve this the 56-year-old Bournemouth-based artist maintains a rigorous fitness regime and avoids alcohol, coffee and high-energy drinks.”
by David A Lindon
He has even trained himself to slow his pulse rate down to a level where he can literally work between heartbeats. It’s a medically dangerous practice and he admits: “There have been a couple of times when my pulse has slowed so much that I’ve almost flaked out at the microscope.”
Fortunately, so far his extreme regime has paid off and he is now in the Guinness Book of Records for creating the world’s smallest ever handmade sculpture, a tiny Lego brick the size of a human white blood cell. The work was officially recognised last year, beating the previous record which had been held by fellow micro artist Dr Willard Wigan since 2017.
The bad news is that while the tiny scale of the work and its means of production and are undoubtedly impressive, the actual ‘art’ itself is pretty dreadful and unoriginal in terms of the content which is mainly copied from existing images.
Perhaps not surprisingly Lindon who originally trained as a small instruments mechanic with the Ministry of Defence and went on to work on components for equipment in tanks and aircraft says he didn’t particularly excel at art at school.
He only became interested in micro art because he saw a TV documentary on the subject and one day finding himself at a loose end decided to give it a go. Discovering he was rather good at the technical side of it he became competitive and driven to work on a smaller and smaller scale. His work now fetches big money and is much sought-after by the cognoscenti.
Now here is a new work celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Japanese Kodansha’s Nakayoshi magazine and its iconic anime character Sailor Moon.The piece took Lindon two months to make under the microscope using a hand-made micro-sized tool kit.
Speaking of the experience, he says: “I worked like a zombie, slowing down my heart so much that it will take months to recover. I now have to force my heart to speed up when I’m walking about in the day otherwise I fall over! Each evening I sat all through the night like an owl perched in front of my Nikon microscope. One thing I have noticed is that I’ve now developed extraordinary night vision and such an acute level of hearing that I can hear insects moving about outside my window at night.”
Ah yes, I hear you say.’It’ll be those bloody insects clomping around in their hobnail boots again!’
Being a generous soul, I’ll take his word for it. Mind you, he has apparently had some strange experiences while working in this way. It can clearly be a stressful experience and he’s faced a few disasters along the way too. For instance he says he is still haunted by memories of the night he found himself on his hands and knees desperately searching for Amy Winehouse who had vanished into the fibres of his carpet.
It might sound as though he was under the influence of hallucinogenics or having a breakdown but it was a little more routine than that. After spending weeks of painstakingly careful work on a micro portrait of the late singer, the almost completed artwork had been swept away by the faintest of air movements. No bigger than a speck of dust, the portrait proved impossible to find. “It was awful,” he told me. “It just suddenly vanished from under my microscope”. It was never found.
