By Carlo Wolff
Nikki Woods is beyond busy this year. As a painter, she has work in three regional exhibitions, including as one of 19 artists in a display of the Cleveland area’s artistic might. As director of Reinberger Gallery at the Cleveland Institute of Art since 2018, she’s working with FRONT International to host a show with a more global approach.
Woods’ paintings are featured in the Cleveland-focused CAN Triennial; The Regional, a show of contemporary art from across the Midwest; and at HEDGE Gallery in Cleveland, which represents her. The Reinberger display is part of “Oh, Gods of Dust and Rainbows,” the second edition of the FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, a multi-venue operation designed to affirm Cleveland’s rising status in the contemporary art world. The CAN Triennial runs through Aug. 31. The Regional ends Sept. 11. FRONT International ends Oct. 2, and “Represented Artists, Group Exhibition” at HEDGE ends Aug. 26.
Woods’ paintings delight the eye and pique the imagination. An artist of increasing renown, Woods paints to free her mind –
and yours.
“I think we live in a visual-culture world where images and artwork are becoming more democratized because of Instagram, because of social media,” says Woods, 32. “In one way, it’s good to be able to have access to see artwork from all over the world on any platform. But, in another way, everything starts looking the same.”
Her paintings by no means look the same.
Her canvases often reference pop culture even as they pay homage to the past. Take the marquee painting from “Vivid Wild Things,” her summer 2021 solo exhibition at HEDGE. It vamps on an image from the 1998 movie “Wild Things,” showing the floating heads of two femmes fatales. To Woods, the work also is “sort of a callback to historical paintings of sirens emerging from water,” like Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus.” Woods’ palpable, richly colored works explore the tension between what can be considered high art and historical antecedents, “something that’s been diluted – not so much diluted, transcribed through time,” she says.
To Woods, the creative journey matters as much as the destination.
“My technique is largely improvisational,” she says. “I like to start with a general idea, sketch that out directly on the canvas with paint, and then it transforms from there. I like that I don’t know where I’ll end up when I’m finished. The goal is for the painting to always remain fresh, and not forced. … I kill a painting immediately when it feels like it’s forced, or I’ve labored it too much.”
Woods amasses photographs and collects vintage Playboy and Good Housekeeping magazines for images of the American dream she questions in her celebratory and nervy art. She also mines her own subconscious for her paintings, which, she says, “dance on the edge of irony.”
“A painting is usually completed in three sessions,” she says. “I paint in short bursts. I want the paintings to maintain a sort of intense fervor and urgency. Sometimes I’ll paint over the whole thing and start over if I don’t like it. I have to be free to let it go and risk it, or else it doesn’t work. In this way, painting is about freedom.”
A closer look
The Woods entries in the CAN Triennial straddle modern and primal, figurative and reverie. They are softer, more glowing, than the ones in “Vivid Wild Things.” But they’re no less complex or ambitious.
Woods’ work in The Regional, an exhibition that began in the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, is now on view at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo. The Regional was originally supposed to show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, but controversy over moCa’s cancellation of a show by Shaun Leonardo focusing on police killings of unarmed Black men and boys led to the spiking of The Regional in Cleveland.
Woods’ “The Unicorns” and “Lights and Matches,” on view as part of CAN Triennial at the Morgan Conservatory in Cleveland, have more in common than size and price – respectively 31 x 29 inches and $2,000. Both conjure immanence. “The Unicorns,” all green, blue, pink and brown, is about mythology. It feels ancient, though its technique is modern, its play of shadow and light immediate. Its lowest level is shadowy and luminescent, suggesting natural growth. But there also is ambiguity, a hallmark of Woods’ work: Are the unicorns, horns cocked to form a pyramid, poised for battle? Or are they ready to play?
“Lights and Matches” presents an extravagantly coiffed, bespectacled woman with a sharply detailed cigarette popping out of her crimson mouth. She stares at the viewer, creating an experience both disturbing and compelling. This portrait in shades of fire is smoky, like a barbecue. It’s a taunt and an invitation.
A productive duality
Woods grew up in South Euclid, the middle child in an artistic family. Art “was something I always really loved and connected with from a young age – and since my parents encouraged it, I developed it further,” says Woods, who lives in Cleveland Heights with Mike Meier, her partner of 12 years, and his daughter, Lily. “I wasn’t really as interested in anything else.” (A 2010 CIA graduate, Meier teaches painting at his alma mater.)
A 2008 Brush High School graduate, Woods was mentored by her teachers, painter Sarah Curry and photographer Hadley K Conner. Woods then gravitated naturally toward CIA, and called her time there “the most challenging and vigorous educational experience I’d ever had.”
Woods lived at her parents’ South Euclid home and commuted to CIA, graduating in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in painting.
“I learned how to think critically and deeply about the world around me; how to read images, and how they profoundly affect the world around us,” she says. “I also learned how to develop an artistic practice and the vital importance of creative communities.”
Among her CIA influences: Sarah Kabot, an associate professor and chair of drawing, and Lane Cooper, associate professor of painting.
“Even as a student, Nikki had a sophisticated view of work,” Cooper says. “She was – and still is – in love with art and artmaking. She was drawn to other students who were also truly in love with art. It brought an incredible energy to the studios to have her there – excitedly exchanging paint-mixing ‘recipes,’ newly discovered artists, vibrant color combinations and passionately debating how art ought to be. I think it says a lot for her instincts that she’s still at the heart of the community she helped build then.”
Her rigorous education stands Woods in good stead at Reinberger Gallery, a large, white-walled exhibition space on the first floor of the college. While she enjoys working with students on shows there, she also values learning from eminences like Dexter Davis, one of four artists presented in the gallery as part of the FRONT International show.
“Sometimes, I’m very much mentored by the artist,” she says. “Dexter Davis is a Cleveland legend, an artist who is expert in his craft. I learned so much from working with him, trying to help him get everything together that he needs for his exhibition.”
The FRONT link enhances CIA’s international reputation while the CAN Triennial extends the art school’s influence on the region, Woods says. “I think both exhibitions can speak to each other.”
Private and public
Painting in her Cleveland Heights home studio is satisfying to Woods because it provides an outlet for expression of her individuality. Art at home also provides haven. Woods’ work at Reinberger pleases her in another way, she says.
New students sometimes think a gallery is exclusively for professionals, an exclusionary place “where art with a capital A happens,” she says. Woods viewed the space that way when she started the Reinberger job. Now, creating opportunities for people to see themselves within its space and putting together neophytes and veterans to see what such a collision might generate make her Reinberger work a joy rather than a chore.
Cooper says Woods has helped make Reinberger a gallery of destination-location quality.
“Her use of color and her understanding of how one piece of work talks to another and her love of art come through in the way she puts shows together,” Cooper says of Woods, whom Cooper has long considered a peer. “She is often called on to ‘frame’ the work or ideas of others, and because she’s an artist – and because of her professional generosity – you can see the work, get to the ideas, in ways that are engaging and thought-provoking.”
Woods says she thinks of her “painting practice as purely selfish, as self-indulgent behavior. It’s a place where I can be – in a positive way – myself and I can indulge in whatever thoughts or interests.” Administering the Reinberger is “about serving someone else – serving another artist and helping them to develop their vision. It’s not about me at all, and that’s fine.”
On view
• Nikki Woods’ artwork in the CAN Triennial can be viewed at the Morgan Conservatory, 1754 E. 47th St., Cleveland, through Aug. 31. For more information, visit cantriennial.org.
• At HEDGE Gallery, Woods’ work can be viewed through Aug. 26 in a group exhibition with 18 other artists represented by HEDGE, located at 1300 W. 78th St., Suite 200, Cleveland. More information is at hedgeartgallery.com.
• Woods is featured in The Regional exhibition, on view at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd., Kansas City, Mo., through Sept. 11. More information is at kemperart.org.
