[1] He has been described as "making messy, minimal sculptures from found and discarded materials such as cardboard, twine, plywood and scrap metal.
[4] Nickell's first solo exhibition, Built for Speed, was at the Sue Spaid Gallery in 1990, with a one-artist show, “Patrick Nickell: Built For Speed, A Sculpture Survey,” being at Luckman Fine Arts Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles.
In a 1994 review of a major solo exhibition at Kohn Turner Gallery, Carmine Lannaconne wrote in Art Issues, "Other artists have made the funky and the junky into the chic and elegant, but what distinguishes Nickell is the quixotic sincerity he brings to the endeavor.
"[7] With the exhibitions, he, alongside several other artists, were noticed for the use of sculpting to make "[t]hree-dimensional drawings in [...] space".
They had first moved in together after graduate school and created a studio in Downtown Los Angeles.