There’s just something about pencils that make them perfect for art. The graphite is soft and easily manipulated, making pencils awesome for drawing and shading traditional sketches, but for some reason, pencils also lend themselves to nontraditional forms of art, too. Like, for example, the weird and creepy pencil faces or, in this instance, the pencil-tip art of Dalton Ghetti. Ghetti takes pencils, sharpens them, then carves art into the very tip of the pencil. You can’t do that with a pen!
Ghetti, a 49-year-old carpenter from Connecticut, got into pencil carving when he was very young. “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. One day, I had a eureka moment and decided to carve into the graphite of a pencil.”
Ghetti has done about 100 of his pencil carvings, but he doesn’t sell his art. Instead, he gives the pencils away to friends who, in return, give him more pencils. He’s working on his magnum opus, a carving commemorating September 11 that features 3000 individually-carved teardrops.
Tags: Dalton Ghetti, pencil art, graphite art, art carved on the tip of a pencil, miniature art, unusual art media, unusual sculptures, unusual art, unusual hobbies, Connecticut, artists, awesome pictures