Dalton Ghetti, lead sculptor

Dalton Ghetti pencils

Dalton Ghetti pencils

“At school I would carve a friend’s name into the wood of a pencil and then give it to them as a present. Later, when I got into sculpture, I would make these huge pieces from things like wood, but decided I wanted to challenge myself by trying to make things as small as possible.”
— Dalton Ghetti

Dalton Ghetti pencils

Dalton Ghetti pencils

Dalton Ghetti pencils

Dalton Ghetti pencils

More of an insight on Vimeo: Pencil artist Dalton Ghetti (embedded below).

In 2002 Dalton Ghetti began working on a memorial project for 9/11 where each person who died is represented by a tiny graphite teardrop about the size of a grain of rice. The Connecticut-based sculptor has been carving one teardrop per day, and when he finishes he’ll glue the drops to a white background to form a larger teardrop.

Dalton Ghetti, on Facebook
Finding the Art in a Pencil Tip, on NYTimes.com

Via @myttonwilliams.


Comments

14 responses to “Dalton Ghetti, lead sculptor”

  1. This was so interesting Dave! I enjoyed every second of it! Nice find! Just when you think you’ve seen them all…

  2. These are amazing. I pride myself on being able to sharpen a pencil correctly but this is something else.

    Also interesting is the way the graphite colours and affects the wood grain and taper which I think also adds the to the whole effect.

    Bit of a killer when the lead breaks though!

  3. Amazing work! I posted about him too ( http://stuffveronicalikes.blogspot.com/2010/09/art-is-everywhere.html )

    I guess his work will be exhibited at V&A in September because it is on the homepage right now! http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/power-of-making/

    By the way, very good blog, I’m always following!!

    Veronica

  4. These are great David – not seen this before and it is so creative.

    You would have to have fingers like a surgeon to have the skill to do this work!

  5. Peter, there’s a particular piece called the cemetery collection, for all those leads that broke along the way.

  6. Amazing art!

  7. Oh, man! Beautiful!
    How did he… where did the… what did he… argh, nevermind!

  8. These are amazing! Such detail….

    Thanks for sharing!

  9. I never saw something like this befor, so much attention to details, using pencil leads as canvas, simply amazing!

  10. Wow, truly incredible. I often wonder how these people come up with such artistic concepts and have so much respect for the amount of care and attention to detail their work entails.

  11. This is awesome. I love seeing art made out of everyday objects!

  12. Fahreta Avatar
    Fahreta

    I am speechless, this stuff is absolutely incredible.
    People like this are amazing.

  13. This film is so inspirational, thanks for sharing the art!

  14. Amazing work… fine eye for detail!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *