Scrolling through Joshua Smith’s Instagram page is like touring a dollhouse. Or rather, strolling down a miniature neighborhood, but one that isn’t necessarily inviting. His miniature works focus on the overlooked aspects of urban environments such as grime, rust, and decay to discarded cigarettes and graffiti. Those are perfectly recreated in 1:20 scale miniatures. It’s cute, but also a bit uncanny.
“I have been fascinated with miniatures and modelmaking ever since I was little and can remember making miniature things out of cardboard boxes ever since I was very young,” recalled Smith in an interview with The Daily Miniature. “The interest stems from building model kits when I was a kid and I have always been fascinated with miniature scenes from model railroads.”
But it took him some time to turn his original passion into a fulltime job. Formerly a self-taught stencil artist, Smith refocused his career to establishing an art gallery based in Adelaide, South Australia showcasing both emerging and well established local. But in 2015, after the closure of his gallery, he refocused back onto his own career this time as a self-taught miniaturist. All in all his career spans across 18 years, with over 100 exhibitions in cities like London, Paris, Berlin, New York, and Hong Kong.
“I like making things which look realistic and I like to play with perspective,” he says. “It’s funny when I take photos of my miniatures… people think that it is something that is actual real life scale but then when I take a photo of something in real life, they are wondering if it is miniature! I like messing around with that and it is something that I really enjoy doing.”
Follow him on Instagram for more:
