Nicole Gordon

Cleveland, surprisingly, has several pretty good art galleries. It has Shaheen, which brought the Ai Yamaguchi show to town, MOCA, which had Yoshitomo Nara last year, and Spaces, which was not only given $100,000 by Peter B. Lewis (of Progressive Insurance) late last year, but also was the location of a comic-book show in which some of my work was displayed.
As one would expect, the $100,000 grant helped Spaces get more artists to exhibit their work at the small gallery, and allowed them to do it more often. Their latest show, Topographic, features many excellent aritst. My favorite, however, is Nicole Gordon. I have not been to the gallery for the show yet, but I promise you all that I am very excited to see it soon!

Gordon's art is refreshingly unique and creative (aren't they all ... ?)
I like how she uses Medieval paintings for reference. I have never seen such modern art use that as inspiration! Also, she combines paints and ink in an original way, and even in her less Medieval-esque paintings, she makes her subjects somehow appear flat (in a good way). I really love the color schemes and 2D appearance of her stuff -- you would think that deliberately doing something like that would make your art look uninteresting, but it does quite the opposite!