Hasta La Ideas

It’s Nice That recently tweeted a series of sculptures by Brazilian artist Dalton Ghetti, made solely from the wood and lead of pencils…

Miniaturist sculpture can often feel like the preserve of tricksy tourist art (see Your Name on a Grain of Rice) but Ghetti’s take on the medium – where the wood of the pencil acts as a tiny plinth for his graphite sculptures – is as beautiful as it is skillful.

As a trained carpenter, based in Connecticut in the US, Ghetti says that the process of carving his tiny sculptures can take many months. In addition to a steady hand, he uses just a razor blade, sewing needle, and sculpting knife to make the pieces.

He even has a ‘cemetary’ display of all the broken lead sculptures that didn’t quite make it through to the final stage. And the finished items are only ever given away to friends – Ghetti apparently only makes postcards and prints of his work available to buy.

Ghetti’s cemetary of broken lead sculptures

Kidrobot’s KRonikle blog (and also telegraph.co.uk, who posted a gallery of Ghetti’s work earlier this month) has a whole series of his pieces on show.