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Eternal Returns

Dennis Maher walks among his installations in the Farrar House, 506 Delaware Avenue.

Buffalo is reasserting itself architecturally. Buffalo is rebuilding, renovating and rediscovering. We can see it in the restoration of the Frank Lloyd Wright Darwin D. Martin House and Toshiko Mori’s Visitor Center, a church transformed into the Righteous Babe Records performance space and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, old buildings being converted into new lofts.

On Saturday, October 14, in the Farrar House (or the Knights of Columbus Building, 506 Delaware Avenue), Dennis Maher’s Eternal Returns will open for one night and explore rebirth in Buffalo. Maher’s work consists of restoration, but with a unique quality: He uses the waste of other restoration projects to bring new life to old buildings. Maher defines his work as “afterlives, the attempt to renew and to give another life to the wasted remains of a city.”

Consider buildings as living entities with three basic stages: birth, life and death. Renovation, essential to Eternal Returns, is the process where buildings are revived and reborn. Yet even demolition and renovation result in discarded waste, an aspect that Maher finds a way to engage in his work. He resuses materials like window frames, wood paneling, tiles, the waste least desirable and thrown out first. Maher transforms the perception of waste: “I am trying to redeem those things—to bring life into the dull and mundane.”

Maher collects his materials by working at various demolition sites, picking up waste from owners on curbsides and looking in salvage yards. Over the years, this process has allowed him to build interesting networks with craftsmen, contractors, demolition crews and property owners: “We don’t always see eye to eye with my work but they respect my intentions and have accommodated me and I have also helped them out.”

Eternal Returns spans various disciplines, as Maher explains: “I would hope that it speaks to a lot of different audiences. Architecture, landscapes, material recycling, even thinking of the work as an archive of a city. The more levels that one can engage us, the stronger and more meaningful the project.”

His work is also a transition between sculpture and painting: “Each time, I feel I can adhere to keeping the image to the two-dimensional plane. But each time, I find a moment where I have to come out.” After architecture studies at Cornell, Maher began painting strictly on canvas. He explains this as “a way to get away from architecture, and finding a way where I can deal with it on my own terms.”

Maher, currently an adjunct professor at the University at Buffalo, approaches his teaching with a similar methodology as his work: “Drawing and construction are always influencing each other, and always resounding against each other.” He also teaches a class in bookmaking. “It is an opportunity for students to think about how they represent themselves and how to represent their work…To make a book is an act of construction.”

"Eternal Returns," in collaboration with the Nina Freundheim Gallery, opens for one night only, Saturday, October 14, 6-8pm.

Fresco painting techniques provided the original catalyst for Maher’s bridge between architecture and art, as he describes the process: “It is quite literally a synthesis of painting and architecture. Dry pigment is applied to a wet plaster surface. A chemical reaction occurs and, bam, you have building and painting solidified into one whole.”

Other artistic influences include abstract cubism, expressionism and the land art movement, where art shifts into the domain of the city, architecture, and landscape: “I love to paint and I love surfaces. I thought to myself, ‘How was I going to get the city into painting in a very direct way?’”

Another major influence in Maher’s work is the postindustrial condition of Buffalo. “There isn’t any other place where you can take half a side of a house, strap it to your car and drive it down the road. So I am keener on thinking that this is made possible by the unique environment of Buffalo.”

Some of his larger works come from other spaces, and were modified for transport. However, the mere nature of moving forced his work to change: “To bring them here, I had to alter them, add, take away, reorganize, bust into them. They had to transform.” So while his work has been in place for two years, it is a continual renovation rather than a static display.

Eternal Returns opens concurrently with the newly restored late-19th-century Knights of Columbus mansion. Located in the adjacent spaces, Eternal Returns and the restored mansion show the two extremes of restoration. The condition of Maher’s space is a stark contrast to typical renovation. Drywall is patched but not painted and the floors are bare wooden planks. Maher, originally looking for a more pristine environment, ultimately found the unfinished nature of the space a powerful balance to his rebuilt work. “There is a certain kind of tension between the rawness of the pieces and the rawness of the space,” he says.

The history of the space resonates. A delicate plaster trim hidden behind drywall reveals the mansion’s former glory as a two-story theater that was used for parties and gatherings for the Knights of Columbus. “There is a very interesting theatrical substructure to the space that plays in with my work.”

Mayer combines old and new, architecture and art to create something that challenges our perceptions of renovation. Waste is no longer useless ruin to be discarded, but becomes a possibility for something new. Maher puts it best: “Restoration is redemption.”

Design Matters is presented in association with the UB School of Architecture and Planning and supported by a fellowship endowed by Polis Realty.