(b. 1976)
Dennis Maher is an internationally recognized artist, designer and educator who work explores fantastic and imaginative possibilities for the built environment. He is the Founding Director of Assembly House 150 and Clinical Assistant Professor at University at Buffalo, Department of Architecture, where he has taught since 2004. His creative work, research and teaching combines the disciplines of art, design and construction with civic engagement, real and imagined places, and processes of community participation.
Maher is a graduate of Cornell University, where he received his professional degree in architecture in 1999. In 2009, Maher established the Fargo House, an immersive sculptural environment within his own house on Fargo Avenue in Buffalo, a site that has become a center for creative, community engaged learning.
Maher’s 3‐story sculptural house transformation for the Mattress Factory Art Museum in Pittsburgh, PA has received over 100,000 visitors since its opening in 2016. Exhibitions of Maher’s work have also been presented at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo), where he was the 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence, Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (Shenzhen, China), Black and White Gallery and Project Space (Brooklyn, NY), Pulse Miami Art Fair, and Real Art Ways (Hartford, CT). Maher is a recipient of the NYFA Fellowship (2014), the Real Art Ways STEP UP Award (2011), the Black and White Project Space Prize (2010), a NYSCA Independent Projects Grant (2010), and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship (2008). His work has been featured in NYTimes, Sculpture Magazine, Art Monthly, Architectural Review, and ARCHDaily. Maher has realized exhibitions, conducted workshops and delivered presentations throughout the world and is a frequent guest lecturer and critic at Cornell University, College Architecture, Art and Planning.