Artist Nick Nix
A DRAWN-OUT CAREER LOCAL ARTIST FINDS HIS NICHE DRAWING CARICATURES Writer / Christy Heitger-Ewing Photographer / Eli Beaverson
Straight out of high school, Cicero resident Nick Nix went to work for his parents as a parts runner for an electrical firm. Through the years, he worked his way up to become an electrician. In his free time, he did what he had done since he was a young boy - he drew comics. Though he has always adored art, he never considered it to be a feasible full-time job. “In those days, if you weren’t a painter or a sculptor, the idea of doing artwork for a living wasn’t a process,” Nix says.
When Nix’s parents’ company went out of business in 1989, he started working for a screen print company. He also began working on a cartoon strip and drawing caricatures. In the late 1990s, he and his wife Patty launched Cartoon Ups, a visual entertainment company specializing in live caricature and satirical cartoon illustrations. Patty acts as business owner and event coordinator, while Nick works as a cartoonist, illustrator and caricature artist. “In those days, I had this idea of moving under the moniker of being like a car mechanic except I was a cartoon mechanic, so if people wanted to be drawn, I’d give
them a cartoon-up and draw them as a caricature or cartoon,” Nix says. Though things were starting to fall into place where Nix’s love of art was concerned, his health began to decline when he was diagnosed with diabetes. In 2002 he lost the lower part of his left leg because of the disease, and four years later lost the lower part of his right leg as well. “It snuck up on me,” Nix says. “Unfortunately, with diabetes you don’t know you’ve got it until something happens. It was just a terrible set of circumstances.”
WestfieldMag.com / MARCH 2020 / WESTFIELD MAGAZINE / 17
