“Looking back on people I could have chosen to love is sad. I know I decided on the right path, but it does not mean that it is easy and that one doesn’t have regrets about it. This sculpture is about the loss of someone from the past – for whom there is always a candle burning in the dark recess of my mind. I have always wondered what would have happened had I gone down that road with her.
This sculpture has a woman sitting near a vessel that has an image of the man she is thinking of. The use of the figure is familiar to me. As a cartoonist, I have studied the human form – joints, connections, hands and expressions of the body that lend themselves to expression in sculpture.
As an artist I am really an observer – like a photographer. I recognize the things that I think are important to me, mentally capture these situations in my mind, and then translate them into cartoons or sculptures. My art is a way to understand myself, the world, a new revelation, or my relationships – since the world is constantly unfolding to me.”
Richard Nickel was born in Rochester, N.Y. and grew up benefitting from the creativity of the Children’s Television Workshop, Mad Magazine and Snoopy. He received his MFA in Ceramics from Edinboro University in PA.
Nickel has exhibited widely and his work is published in numerous books on ceramics. In 2002, Nickel became the Art Education Program Director and the Ceramics Program Director at Old Dominion University. He has received several research grants on education and ceramics.