Among buildings he’s recreated in miniature are the Brick House Restaurant in West Milton, the First United Methodist Church and Hayner Cultural Center in Troy and the Coldwater Café, Harrisons, and the Hotel Gallery in Tipp City.
“I make it and give it to them (the building’s occupants), if they want. Everybody has taken them so far,” Stickelman, a retired engineer, said of his buildings. He did one building on commission, a model of a more than 500-year-old home in India.
On the road to creating a miniature, he takes pictures of a building and makes a rough draft of a drawing. The miniatures are made with mat board and poplar wood for framing. The first building he tackled around three years ago was the old Municipal Building in downtown Tipp City, now home to Tipp-Monroe Community Services.
He likes the most complicated buildings best. The courthouse took about two and a half months to complete.
He enjoys the challenge of replicating building details, such as the stonework on the courthouse or awnings on a building such as the Coldwater Café.
His solutions to those challenges were cutting about 1,500 pieces of strip wood to give the courthouse exterior a stone-like look and stretching Saran Wrap over a tiny awning frame and painting the wrap blue.
“A lot of time it is the challenge of looking at something and thinking, ‘How can I do that?’ ” he said. “Sometimes I throw it in the trash. I have been trying to upgrade quality as I go along.”
He won’t let vision problems caused by a corneal disease stop his work, using a large magnifier when addressing building details.
Born in Darke County, Stickelman graduated from Newton High School in Pleasant Hill in 1952. A graduate of Ohio State University, he worked in engineering for 40 years at Process Equipment Co. near Tipp City. He and his wife of 53 years, Diana, have two children and three grandchildren.
For years he designed and built models of cars, taking photographs of the vehicle he was replicating or looking at pictures in books or magazines. He also built four historical ship models. The ships have been donated to the Tipp City Public Library.
Stickelman also has taken up art during the past four years, fashioning pieces from materials such as metals, wood, plastics and paper mache. An Oriental theme can be seen in several of his works. He particularly likes using copper in his pieces, because it is nice to work with, he said.
Stickelman has an art booth at Studio 14 Gallery in downtown Tipp City and is working on the art for a decorated door he plans to display at this summer’s Sculptures on the Square in Troy.
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