portrait of the artists by Janice Rubin
NICK VAUGHAN & JAKE MARGOLIN (b. 1983, Colorado; b. 1980, California) are Houston-based interdisciplinary artists who explore connections between America’s LGBTQIA+ histories and contemporary queer experiences. A married couple, Nick & Jake’s primary body of work, 50 States, is an ongoing series of installations made in response to little-known pre-Stonewall queer histories from each state. This multi-decade endeavor draws from recent groundbreaking academic work, the artists’ own archival research, and significant time spent learning from and collaborating with local LGBTQIA+ community members. Their practice focuses on remnants of performed actions, processes of decay and entropy, and an expansive understanding of archiving and cartography. They assert queer historical agency and cultural presence while complicating historical narratives through the ambiguities and contradictions that underpin the experiences of their queer forbearers.
Recently, the artists have developed a body of drawings, parallel to 50 States, in which they stencil dry pigment and charcoal powder on paper and then blow it away with the assistance of an air compressor. This act of erasure is also the means of impressing the pigment on the tooth of the paper, resulting in phantom images that are present only through their removal. The body of work is about the vanishing of ghosts, the absence and concurrent permanence of memory and place. In their practice, Nick and Jake engage the LGBTQIA+ community's visceral and intuitive knowledge of their own history, drawing lines between media, gesture, storytelling, and lived experience.
For the last decade the artists’ work has shined a light on the under-appreciated history of the south’s queer community and the outsized role it has played in the national movement for queer rights. These projects have included interviewing, partnering with, and commissioning work from a wide range of community elders; organizing panel discussions, long table discussions, and other community building programming around issues facing the Houston LGBTQIA+ community; and collaborating extensively with local queer archives, libraries, and community spaces. A solo exhibition titled Town Meeting 1978–2028 at Art League of Houston in the summer of 2025 culminated in a symposium held over two days in the exhibition space. The symposium kicked off a three-year project , leading up to the meeting's 50-year anniversary in 2028, engaging Houston entities in the fifty-year anniversary of Town Meeting 1, which was pivotal in the organization of queer rights in Houston with national impacts.
In 2024, Nick & Jake founded Rendezvous Center for Art, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that supports interdisciplinary artwork exploring the rich diversity of queer experiences. They have had solo exhibitions at Blaffer Art Museum; DiverseWorks; Art League; and Aurora Picture Show, all in Houston, Texas; Oklahoma City University Norick Art Center, OK; Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, Stillwater, OK; Invisible Dog Art Center, New York, New York; and non-traditional community-facing venues including Pride Festivals in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and Houston, Texas; Houston Community College Campuses, Houston Public Library, University of Houston MD Anderson Library, and numerous queer bars. Their work was shown in group shows including at Contemporary Art Museum Houston; Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, TX; Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL; among others. Their work is included in many permanent collections including in Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA; City of Houston Public Art Collection; Brooklyn Historical Society, NY; among others. Coverage of their work has been reviewed in Artforum, Hyperallergic, Glasstire, and Terremoto Magazine. Margolin and Vaughan are recipients of NYFA Fellowship, Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and grants from IdeaFund, MAPFund, Houston Arts Alliance, and Mid America Arts Alliance. Both artists are members of the theater company The TEAM and frequently collaborate as visual designers with choreographers Faye Driscoll and Yoshiko Chuma. Nick and Jake are represented by McClain Gallery and have had two solo exhibitions (2023, 2026) there.