Bio
Nicole Bauguss received her degree in Design and Visual Communication from Virginia Commonwealth University. She worked as an Exhibit and Package Designer in Richmond Virginia before abandoning the use of computers to pursue a career as a builder focusing on Historic Preservation. Bauguss trained with Master Builders on period homes from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s in Church Hill, also known as the St. John’s Church Historic District of Richmond Virginia. Church Hill is known as the site of Virginia’s second revolutionary convention where Patrick Henry gave his “Give me Liberty or give me Death” speech. She founded RipRoost in 2001, an integrative DesignBuild Company focusing on Eco-Conscious Building Practices and Materials reuse.
The rigor of research on the specific identities of the homes Bauguss has restored in her 10 year building career combined with the intention of an education as a Visual Communicator has infused her artistic explorations of space, relevance of materials use with a sense of preserving the past and by re-contextualizing them in “present” helps us understand the continuity of time despite the forced separation of phases of history.
Her work spans the creation of tactile functional furniture and boxes to large scale integrative installations, site specific performance projects and set design for dance. She has exhibited extensively on both the East and West Coasts. Her work can be found in collections in France, England, Switzerland, Mexico, Argentina and Japan.
While working in the San Francisco Bay Area Bauguss collaborated with the Red Poppy Art House at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. As part of their BayAreaNow 5 residency, the Red Poppy Art House (RPAH) explored the power that small spaces hold as vibrant centers where artists gather, create and make their home. Conceived as an on-site neighborhood experiment in cultural innovation, the RPAH acts as a meeting ground for artists of all disciplines, while engaging the complex social and economic issues of the arts landscape. In YBCA’s Room for Big Ideas (RBI), the Art House presented a month-long program of artists spanning disciplines and musical traditions of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, joining the traditional to the contemporary, and exploring the ways in which design and arrangement of physical space invariably come to represent, if not impose, our values in material form.
Her work is an anthropological, sociological, environmental and artistic study of what we value and what we dispose of as individuals within our communities over time, and how repurposing materials and ideas impacts our lives, histories and ultimately the environment. Nicole continues to investigate the current issues facing society by conceptually integrating sustainability and eco-conscious practices into questions of how we move through life and what our lives reflect about who we are individually and collectively.
Bauguss currently resides in Durham North Carolina where she works as a Creative Consultant, Spatial Designer, Visual Artist and Builder while pursuing her MFA in Studio Art at The Univeristy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also works as an Installation Artist and Visual Designer with the Baker–Tarpaga Dance Company. In their recent project Planet Karaoke, founder Esther Baker-Tarpaga and Bauguss have been researching the effects of infusing installation as a part of the performative development for dancers movement explorations.
