Nano Sculptures By Jonty Hurwitz

In a true tragedy reminding us of the fleeting nature of some human-created art, Hurwitz reveals that the nanosculptures have been lost. This does not, though, leave us high and dry, left to wonder; his artistic journey was so well documented that we are left with images (not as many, certainly, as anyone would have hoped) of the pieces and, above all, their story.
The way the story unfolds is told in a similar way to a Greek tragedy, really. From the start, where he fortuitously finds a warehouse space with Nikon cameras set up — over 200 of them — to capture his models, to unpacking the sculptures when he received them in the mail, everything unfolds with almost a theatrical quality.
Packed in boxes “like a Russian doll,” layer upon layer of boxes and bubble wrap protecting the tiny jewelry box inside that held a mirror, Hurwitz was thrilled to open his creation. Opening that smallest box, though, he saw only the mirror: “There’s nothing on this mirror, and I’m like, ‘is this a scam?'” But then inspiration hit as he watched dust in a ray of sunlight: holding the mirror to the light, angling it this way and that, he noticed seven little specks, no different looking than the dust in the air… except that they were situated in an unnaturally straight line. The hunt was on for magnification that would let him see those specks, and after realizing the futility of a jeweler’s scope or a 400-magnification-power microscope, he found someone who had for over 30 years studied human cells, sperm, and cancer spells in an electron microscope, the only machine powerful enough to look at nano sculptures.