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For Dan 'Nuge' Nguyen, luxury means taking the road less traveled
Operating on the fringes of sculpture, modern art, and design, Dan “Nuge” Nguyen has made a name for himself through turning heavy, rigid wood panels into polished, dynamic art pieces. And yet for Nuge, this career path wasn’t always a given.
“I come from a typical Asian family and my parents told me I was going to be a doctor like my father,” he says. Nuge completed three semesters of pre-med in college but quickly discovered that he didn’t have the passion or talent for it. “I decided, ‘Okay, what do I want to do?’ I really love art, I love design. I want to create things. And for me, that meant architecture.”
After earning his Masters in Architecture, Nuge found the experience of applying his studies to his first job at a design firm to be less than fulfilling. “The most designing I got to do was rearrange condo layouts. At that point, I knew I had to look for a new creative outlet. ”
In his spare time, Nuge joined a wood shop and eventually learned how to make, of all things, cutting boards.
“I got a taste of what it felt like to have ownership over my work: the conception, the building, the production, and then the final product. From that point on, for two years, I would run home from work, change, run to the studio, and make cutting boards.”
