Dennis Maher

Dennis Maher is an artist, designer and educator. Maher is the creator of The Fargo House and the founder and director of Assembly House 150.

His work is a quest to restore the primacy of imagination to the center of self and community. Maher collects and assembles objects, people and stories—often those that have been left behind or forgotten—to create spaces where imagination can thrive. He works with the immediacy of his own surroundings—including the city of Buffalo, his own house and his studio/workshop—and connects the physical world and its patterns of creation and destruction to the innermost landscapes of mind. 

Maher’s projects result in dreamspaces and other wondrous environments that fuse pragmatic realities such as labor, work and shelter with art and pure creativity. The city of Buffalo serves as the real and symbolic center of Maher’s practice that often leverages hands-on education and community-based approaches in planning and implementation. Themes of his work include the nature of house and home, the energy and animism of objects, architecture and craft, preservation imagination, the revelation of the surreal and fantastic within the familiar, and the latent memories of Western and post-industrial cultures. Maher works in a wide range of media including full-scale construction, installation, sculpture, drawing, models, prints, collage and photography. His project team includes University at Buffalo students, participants in the SACRA program at Assembly House 150 and a host of tradespeople and artisans.  

ARC 201/202 Sophomore Design Studio

ARC 502 Design Studio 2

ARC 318 Design Methods

ARC 512 Architectural Communications