Dennis Maher (born 1976) is an American artist based in Buffalo, NY, who is the founder and Executive Director of Assembly House 150. He works in sculpture, installation art, architecture, and design. Maher creates surreal environments from repurposed and newly built architectural fragments, furnishings, miniatures, and other objects.[1][2]
Dennis Maher | |
|---|---|
 Maher in 2022 | |
| Born | February 3, 1976 |
| Education | Cornell University |
| Known for | Artist Designer |
| Website | www.assembledcityfragments.com |
Early work
editFrom 2003 to 2010, Maher worked on Buffalo-area demolition and renovation sites, where he developed an interest in discarded building materials, building dismantlement, and reassembly. His work is inspired by processes of ruination and reconstruction in architecture, and the circularity of materials, especially in post-industrial environments, in cities, and houses.[3]
Maher has exhibited at Black and White Gallery and Project Space, New York, NY; Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY; Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT; Pittsburgh Biennial, Pittsburgh, PA; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Shenzhen, China; Mattress Factory Art Museum, and Pittsburgh, PA.[citation needed]
Career
editMaher’s residence in Buffalo, NY is an environment of art and architectural experimentation. In 2009, Maher worked with local housing activists to acquire two adjacent structures, an 1890s-era Victorian and an 1860-era rear cottage, which was slated for demolition on Fargo Avenue in Buffalo. While living in the main house, Maher remade the interior using secondhand objects such as antique furniture, architectural salvage, models, and miniatures. Inside the house, an evolving world of imagined miniature cities and other mise en scenes collides with basic functions like eating, cooking, and sleeping.[1] In 2012, as an Artist-in-Residence at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Maher worked with building industry tradespeople on The House of Collective Repair project.[4] Maher's experiences connecting tradespeople, art and houses fortified his regard for houses as symbols of the psyche and as thresholds between imagination and everyday life.[5][6][7]
"A Second Home" was an installation by Maher at the Mattress Factory Art Museum in Pittsburgh from 2016 to 2023.[8] The installation transformed the three-story house at 516 Sampsonia Way into a wonderland that collaged a house's real and imagined counterparts. The project incorporated antique furnishings, architectural salvage, miniatures, and other objects to create a multi-layered architectural oasis.[9][10][2]
In 2015, Maher founded Assembly House 150, a nonprofit in the former Immaculate Conception Church at 150 Edward Street in Buffalo, New York's Allentown historic district. The building, contains an evolving 3D collage of architectural fragments, sculptural environments, models, and other artifacts. Assembly House is home to the Society for the Advancement of Construction Related Arts (SACRA), a construction arts training and job placement program developed by Dennis Maher with the Buffalo AKG Art Museum.[11][12][7][13][14][15][16]
References
edit- ^ a b Green, Penelope (2013-01-23). "A Master of Accumulation". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
- ^ a b Elaine A. King (March 2017). "Pittsburgh Dennis Maher Mattress Factory". Sculpture. 36 (2). International Sculpture Center: 66–67. ISSN 0889-728X.
- ^ Byles, Jeff. "Buffalo Unbuilt as Entropic Urban Art Project". www.archpaper.com/. The Architects Newspaper. Retrieved 2021-04-27.
- ^ "Dennis Maher: House of Collective Repair | Albright-Knox". www.albrightknox.org. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
- ^ Nelson-Dusek, Colin. "Dennis Maher: House of Collective Repair". American Craft Council. Retrieved 2021-10-25.
- ^ Stephanie Davidson (2015). Bohn, Martha; Hwang, Joyce; Printz, Gabrielle (eds.). Beyond Patronage. New York: Actar Publisher. pp. 14–15. ISBN 978-1-940291-18-5.
- ^ a b Schalliol, David (2021). The City Creative: The Rise of Urban Placemaking in Contemporary America. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 227–232. ISBN 978-0-226-72722-6.
- ^ "A Second Home, 2016". www.mattress.org. Retrieved 2021-04-27.
- ^ Shaw, Kurt. "Artist Transforms North Side rowhouse over the course of 3 months". www.triblive.com. The Trib Live. Retrieved 2021-04-27.
- ^ Pangburn, DJ (28 September 2016). "An Architect Built A Mysterious Dreamland Inside a House". Vice. Retrieved 2021-10-25.
- ^ "The Society for the Advancement of Construction-Related Arts (SACRA)". Buffalo AKG Art Museum. Retrieved 30 November 2023.
- ^ Woods, Mary N. (2020). Christensen, Peter H. (ed.). Buffalo at the Crossroads (First ed.). Ithaca, NY and London, UK: Cornell University Press. p. 212.
- ^ Gee, Derek (15 December 2017). "Artist-led efforts fosters a new generation of craftsmen". The Buffalo News. www.buffalonews.com. Retrieved 2021-04-27.
- ^ Minner, Jennifer (Spring 2021). "A Pattern Assemblage: Art, Craft, and Conservation". Change over Time. 10 (1): 29. doi:10.1353/cot.2021.0000. S2CID 244340273.
- ^ "A Closer Look: Assembly House 150, a place of worship turned a place of learning". The Buffalo News. www.buffalonews.com. 2 March 2021. Retrieved 2021-04-27.
- ^ Moritz, Amy (Summer 2020). "Learning from the Building: Assembly House 150 takes a unique approach to repurposing a decommissioned church in Buffalo". Stained Glass: 28–33.