BY OWEN FINDSEN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Bill Schickel with a model for "Rotunda of Creation."
(Malinda Rackley photo)
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At Maritain Gallery in Loveland, artist Bill Schickel sits on a scaffold, painting a large mural.
Usually the gallery is used for exhibitions, but for this project, Mr. Schickel needs all the wall space for his large canvases.
The gallery, one room in the Loveland railroad station, is the Schickel Design Co. The mural is one of four canvases symbolizing the elements of creation -- air, water, earth and fire. Each canvas is designed to wrap around a column in the rotunda of the new Mercy Center for Health and Wellness in Anderson Township.
When visitors enter, he climbs from the scaffold to show plans and models of his designs and photographs of the building where the paintings will go.
"The paintings are only a small part of the project. We're doing the whole environment," Mr. Schickel says, "a stained-glass window, four murals, a three-story sculpture and wall inscriptions."
Schickel Design works in five disciplines: stained glass, painting, sculpture, furniture design and architectural design.
"In a lot of projects we do the whole thing," Mr. Schickel says, "including the furniture."
Schickel's "Rotunda of Creation" stands tall at Mercy Center, Anderson.
(Malinda Rackley photo)
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The project, called the "Rotunda of Creation" is complete at Mercy Center for Health and Wellness, 3000 Mack Road, Fairfield. Now he's creating it a second time for Mercy Center, 7495 State Road, Anderson Township, an almost identical building.
For projects of this scope, much of the work is done outside the studio. Mr. Schickel can be found advising contractors at a construction site, confering with clients at a corporate headquarters, supervising workers at a steel fabricating plant. The 40-foot high stone columns for the Mercy Center were created at a sandblasting facility, where his designs were etched into four-ton blocks of concrete.
"My studio is not just here in this building," he says. "It's anywhere I need to be to get the job done."
Traditional tools
The restored 1907 railroad station is divided into six rooms housing gallery, offices, work and storage space. Each room is filled with filing cabinets, reference books, desks and drawing boards.
In a central room, where the former ticket window looks out on railroad tracks, four small square tables have been pushed together to serve as a conference table or a place to gather for lunch.
Except for the bookkeeping, nothing is done on a computer. Mr. Schickel prefers traditional art and design tools: brush, pencil, drawing board, T-square and triangle.
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IF YOU GO
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Discussion and book signing
Bill Schickel will discuss highlights of more than 50 years of design including his commission for the Mercy Centers for Health and Wellness, 7 p.m. Wednesday at Joseph Beth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, Norwood. He also will sign copies of his biography, Sacred Passion: The Art of William Schickel, by Gregory Wolfe, (Notre Dame University Press; $48 paperback, $95 hard bound).
Exhibition
A one-man exhibition of Mr. Schickel's work starts Sept. 18 at the Weston Art Gallery, Aronoff Center for the Arts, downtown. Studio hours
The Maritain Gallery, 127 W. Loveland Ave., Loveland, is open 1-4 p.m., daily except Saturday. 683-1152.
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This is a family business. Wife Mary Schickel works at the computer. Son Joe Schickel is the gallery director, Martin, another son, is projects manager, and daughter Martha Dorff is an artist and designer.
Bill Schickel moves from one drawing board to another, to the painting scaffold in the gallery, wherever there's something to be done.
"We don't do one thing at a time," he says. "We're working on eight different projects right now, one in Birmingham, Ala., one in Charleston, S.C. . . . When I get stuck on something I don't stand back and look at it. I go work on something else, and while I'm working on that, I realize what I ought to do on the other thing."
The studio walls are filled with art, some by Mr. Schickel, some by artists he admires, including Alexander Calder and Georges Rouault.
A partially finished six-foot square painting depicting the crucifixion leans against a wall in one of the crowded rooms. It's part of a group of canvases he's creating for the chapel at Xavier University.
For more than half a century Bill Schickel, 78, and family have been creating art, painting, sculpture, stained glass and architectural design for clients. Historically, he says, such versatility is the norm rather than the exception.
"We live in a fragmented society today but, historically, artists weren't just painters, ceramicists or sculptors. They were artists. They did whatever the problem called for. We never approach a project from the material. We look at the problem and then decide on the medium."
Now he's being recognized for his art and ideas. He is the subject of a lavish new art book and biography, Sacred Passion: The Art of William Schickel by Gregory Wolfe (Notre Dame University Press; $95, $48 paperback).
There is a thread of purity and simplicity in Mr. Schickel's designs. He converted an 1813 barn at Grailville in Loveland into an oratory. He renovated the Trappist and Cistercian Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky. Designed in 1962, both buildings are elegant in their simplicity.
"I'm inspired by what I call frugal splendor," he says. "There's a history of that in this country: the mission churches in the Southwest, the New England village, Shaker design, the American barn, these are examples of things that have real grandeur and splendor, but they also have simplicity and frugality."
Mr. Schickel and his family understand frugality. When they were married in 1947, Mary and Bill moved to a farm in Loveland where they grew their own produce, raised hogs, chickens, cows and reared 11 children. The studio where he works 10 hours a day, often seven days a week, has been in the railroad station since 1978.
In addition to working on projects for clients, he'll have a one-man exhibition in September at the Weston Gallery at the Aronoff Center for the Arts.
The Mercy Centers for Health and Wellness have published a brochure on the artist and the rotunda. "Savor the art of William Schickel," it reads. "It will inspire and illuminate the sacred connection of your body, mind and spirit."
A cancer survivor
Mr. Schickel is especially proud of the Rotunda of Creation, and the Mercy Center's commitment to his art. The two Mercy Centers for Health and Wellness are the largest hospital-based centers in the nation that offer an extensive holistic approach to health.
"Sister Kathy Green (regional vice president, Sisters of Mercy) came out here on another project and when she looked around, she realized that I, as a former cancer patient, would understand the concept. I had cancer, oh gosh, it has to be 30 years ago. I was considered incurable, but here I am.
"The Mercy Center idea is a ground-breaker, bringing the fine arts into a facility like this. They have everything from pools to racket ball to holistic medicine, but the Sisters of Mercy believe that the integration of body mind and spirit is what brings you health.
"You can have all these things, but if your mind and your spirit aren't working right, you're not going to be a healthy person. They have all this machinery to build up the muscles. I call the art push-ups for the soul.
"I like working for clients. I like embodying the vision of somebody who's willing to take a risk. To be able to take a vision and make it visible. Historically that is what the artists did.
"The present paradigm of the artist is self-expression, but the paradigm of the historical artist, and the one I'm interested in, is serving the vision of the community. It is sacred rather than secular; timeless rather than timely . . . what they call "relevant' today.
"It's just a different model, and it also is a model that makes it possible to earn a living. The miracle for me is that I've earned a living at this, raised a big family . . . we've lived below the poverty line half the time, but that's fine. We've had a good time."
