Ma’s House — the community-centered art space based on the Shinnecock Reservation — is growing.
The beloved art space — founded in 2020 and housed within a small, red structure originally built in the 1960s that used to be the home of Loretta Silva, grandmother of founding artist and Shinnecock native Jeremy Dennis — is gaining an additional, newly constructed communal studio to continue the nonprofit’s ongoing mission of fostering artist residency programs for Black, Indigenous and People of Color. With the help of, BuildLabs, the Bridgehampton-based construction and tech firm renowned for their expertise in prefabrication, the structure was built in two days, as the contents of two shipping containers were installed with the help of a crane. According to a press release from the construction firm, BuildLabs has donated over $200,000 in services and materials.
“When the project was brought to us, we were happy to see that we were considered,” says BuildLabs cofounder Punit Chugh in an Instagram post about the project. “We believed that we had something to give back, together.”
The collaboration between Ma’s House and BuildLabs was initiated in 2023, through a Jump Smart grant from Suffolk County, which provides grants for local businesses and cultural arts organizations. Because of the program, Ma’s House was awarded $500,000, although Dennis says correspondence with architect Pete DePasquale, of Garnett.DePasquale, began way earlier than that.
“I’m especially grateful to Pete, since I’m looking back on emails, and I guess it was May 2022, that’s when we first gotten contact,” Dennis says. “He’s been working pro bono, volunteering time towards his dream project. And yeah, I think that’s the big spark of this whole thing. Just this idea of, like you have a dream project and funding will somehow come forward.We have always been discussing this idea of a detached space and what it could be and how it can infuse indigenous design. So, I think it was always a dream, until that grant opportunity through Suffolk County came about, and we kind of approached a couple different builders and got quotes and BuildLabs was the best in terms of the complexity of working on Shinnecock territory and how it’s prefabricated and built off site and brought in.”
The project involves constructing a 1,000-square-foot detached, sunlit studio and gallery space, integrating indigenous design. The design was optimized for natural light, storage, and artistic workflow. The new structure will include maroon HPL siding on the exterior, minimalist wood paneling on the inside, a durable metal roof with exposed glulam beams and rafters, and a usable basement for storage.
“We wanted to create a small, simple building that had just as much as it needed to be to house people from two weeks to two months, to make it a home base, to make it a special place to work, and to tie it into the unique light and air and views of that place,”the architect says.
And now, as spring is on the horizon, so is completing this project.
“We’re getting there,” DePasquale says. “So it was built largely off site and delivered, with frame and envelope assembled in two days on site. Since then, it’s gone back to more traditional construction methods to fit out the interior and the exterior, and that work is in progress. I think really, in the next couple of weeks, the building will be complete.”
