Apr 18, 2008
From tiny pencils, artwork grows
Dalton Ghetti’s intricate art is on display
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by Laura Modlin
Correspondent
A pencil by any other name would still be a pencil — even if it was also a sculpture.
Using only a sewing needle and a razor blade, Dalton Ghetti a Bridgeport artist, creates extremely detailed, miniature sculptures on the tips of pencils. A sample of his work, on display in the Easton Library’s conference room through May 6, drew a record-breaking crowd last Saturday for the opening reception.
Mr. Ghetti has been carving sculptures from pencils for about 30 years and showing his work in this area for the last 10 years. But his passion for art began when he was a child in Brazil.
“At school, sharpening pencils was always done by hand with a razor blade,” he said. “And my mom was a seamstress. She put me and my sisters to work early on.”
Mr. Ghetti came to the U.S. in 1975 when he was 24 years old. He earned his GED and attended Norwalk Community Technical College, receiving an associate’s degree in architecture.
He works as a carpenter, creating floor plans and doing finishing work — creating trim, frames and decks for homes. Mr. Ghetti also designs and builds furniture.
But his passion is sculpting the tiny tips of pencils.
“It’s very challenging work,” Mr. Ghetti said. “I have an interest in small things in life — insects, moths, spiders. I spend a lot of time observing them. There’s a whole microscopic world out there that people don’t even notice.”
Mr. Ghetti finds satisfaction in showing that “there’s beauty in small things that people aren’t even paying attention to.”
Plenty of people were paying attention last Saturday afternoon.
Dolly Curtis, who has been organizing the art shows for the conference room for several years, said this was one of the best-received shows yet. Close to 200 people of a variety of ages showed up.
“Only two other shows have even come close, and those were by much older, very well-established, seasoned area artists,” she said.
“I think the sheer difficulty of the carving captures one’s imagination. Once you see it, you have to look at it more carefully. Then you will never forget seeing it.”
For Mr. Ghetti, sculpting pencils is a private meditation time. He will first spend some time focusing his eyes to work on the small pieces. All his work is done hand-held without a magnifying glass.
“It’s like scratching away dust,” he said. “I’ll work on a piece for an hour and there’s only a tiny amount of dust.”
In fact, Mr. Ghetti can only work up to one and a half hours a day before he has to bring his eyes back to a wider focus.
He works most days but only when he feels inspired. A sculpture of linked hearts — part of the display at the library — took him six months to complete. The alphabet in the exhibit took two and a half years — about one month per letter.
“It’s about patience, among other things, which is lacking these days,” he said.
And it’s not about the money. Mr. Ghetti does not sell his sculptures, but he does sell postcards and posters of them.
Mr. Ghetti gets a lot of pleasure seeing people inspired by his work, especially kids. He talks at a lot of schools.
“I can see their minds start to go,” he said. “I can see them getting inspired and I get inspired by them.”
Mr. Ghetti was also inspired by the tragedies of Sept. 11 and has been creating a memorial. For the last six years he has been shaping teardrops from graphite, making approximately one a day.
He can fashion approximately 30 teardrops from one pencil and has done about 1,800 so far. His goal is to carve 3,000, one for each person lost. He plans to glue them onto a white background forming a giant teardrop.
Mr. Ghetti will conduct a lecture in the library’s conference room from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30. He will bring some tools, some works-in-progress and explain how his pieces are made and what inspired them.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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