HERE is a video from a book signing for ‘Here Comes The Garbage Barge!’ i did as a fund raiser at my favorite non profit organization Happen Inc.

a special thanks to everyone at Happen Inc for a fun event!

i was honored to be asked to speak to the entire art department at Taylor University here in Indiana at their Career Symposium yesterday. Nathan Warstler, a luthier and woodworker from Syracuse Indiana, spoke about his work that has spanned over 30 years, the first instrument he made was a Dulcimer with shell inlay that he put in with a knife!! Beautiful instruments, and amazing craft. talk about meticulous.

the other speaker was Scott Dombrowski, professor of art and digital media at Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois. Scott had inspiring advice on balancing work and family and creative passions, he has found a way to run them parallel to each other in his life. and he said he had 40+ chicken in his back yard, awesome!

then i got up and tried my best to ‘illustrate’ how my work from college to now (15yrs) has evolved, changed and developed. for better and worse. trying my best to show how even terrible failures can help you grow beyond expectations. 

recently i was invited by my elementary art teacher, Mrs. Waltz, to return to my elementary school Randolph Southern (i was in 6th grade in 1988, and the lunch trays are still the same)

and do a workshop for a group of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders that are part of a program called Junior Art Masters (J.A.M.) where the group of 10 kids get to spend selected chunks of time to pursue art creation. they were able to spend a full school day under my supervision. scary thought considering i have had practically no experience teaching… i decided to focus the workshop on creating with found objects and junk. the kids were asked to collect over the winter a shoebox of junk that ‘caught their eye’ some kids brought in broken toys, one brought in the family’s recycling from a week, milk jugs and all, we had too large tables of about anything you could think of. i had planned a short demo for the beginning of the day , but once i explained what i do , how i use junk in my creations and showed a couple examples of mine, i couldnt keep the kids from gravitating to the junk tables

so i ditched the demo and let them go at it. some created 10 objects and a some planned and executed entire environments.

here are a few…

all in all i was delighted with the enthusiasm of the kids and it was amazing to watch how they approached the materials and the day went along. at first many of them especially the boys would take the toys and build on them and use figures as figures but after a few hours they really started to take the objects out of context and look at how the shape and colors could translate to other things and lead to new creations that only they could have created. play is an amazing thing… i was in awe at how they just went at it. 

Boston here we come!
i have the tremendous honor of speaking at the 2008 HOW conference May 18-21 2008.
nothing big just one of several breakout sessions. my session is titled:
Inside Red Nose Studio
The Creative Process of Illustrator Chris Sickels.
i’ll be focusing on the unsung heros of my work, the little things in the backgrounds that never have the limelight, never get the camera’s attention like the puppets do… they are the props, the supporting actors, the things that i sometimes get the biggest kick out of creating because more often than not they are made of random bits of junk that are stored in many of the drawers around the studio…
this little chair is one of the many props i’ll talk about.


it’s seat is an old rubber ‘foot’ from one of those old, heavy, black typewriters that were built like tanks.
the red plastic back is cut out of a discarded red pill bottle.
the rest is aluminum wire.