To see Hasan Kale’s art, you need to look closely. Very, very closely. The 67-year-old Turkish artist, who lives in Alexandria, paints intensely detailed miniature masterworks onto unconventional culinary canvases. A scene from Pulp Fiction on a piece of popcorn. A pumpkin seed painted with Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” A portrait of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, on a grain of rice.
Over three decades, the artist dubbed “Microangelo” has created more than 400 tiny oil and acrylic paintings without ever using a magnifying glass or other specialized equipment. “However, you must discipline your hands so they don’t shake,” says Kale, who spends from three days to three months producing a piece. (You can check out examples on his Instagram, @hasankale_microangelo, or buy one on Etsy.)
Given their small size and often edible canvases, there have been some unfortunate incidents. At one exhibit, a guest unknowingly ate a pair of portraits—one on a pistachio, the other on a piece of chocolate—thinking they were hors d’oeuvres. Weeks of work gone in a couple of bites.
Kale taught himself the art form while living in Istanbul, his longtime home. He moved to the States in 2021 after working on a documentary exploring his homeland’s unique coffee culture. In 2022, he helped one of the film’s collaborators, Gizem White, open the Turkish Coffee Lady cafe in Old Town. He serves as its creative director, painting the murals on the walls and overseeing the menu of classic Turkish fare, such as simit (sesame-studded Turkish bagel) sandwiches, dainty manti dumplings, and bull’s-eye-shaped phyllo pies stuffed with feta and spinach.
The multi-hyphenate talent has one more surprising skill: fortuneteller. Rather than reading a palm or tarot cards, Kale divines the future from shapes and patterns left by the Turkish coffee grounds smudging the bottom of a cup. It’s his turn to look very, very closely.
Nevin Martell is a food, travel, and foraging writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, Men’s Journal, Fortune, Travel + Leisure, The Daily Beast, BBC, and many other publications. He is author of eight books, including Red Truck Bakery Cookbook: Gold-Standard Recipes from America’s Favorite Rural Bakery, Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip, and The Founding Farmers Cookbook: 100 Recipes From the Restaurant Owned by American Family Farmers. When he isn’t working, he loves spending time with his son, foraging for wild foods, and traveling.
