b-home Studio in Catskill, New York is a project that has been Matt Bua’s life’s work for close to two decades. The artist and his friends have cobbled together over 30 structures concentrated in a just one- or two-acre area of the 27 acres that he owns. He has dubbed it a “mythical repurposed city.”
He was living in Brooklyn when he first bought the property, which became the perfect escape from the city. “All I wanted to do was go up there and build,” he recalls. “The idea was not having to build furiously for however much install time, and then it’s up for a couple of months before you take it down and move it around or destroy it or reuse it,” Bua said. “It was building something you know that could stay longer.”
The artist traces his love of DIY building to his childhood. “When I was maybe eight or nine, I put a piece of plywood on top of this dresser and then took the drawers out and I sat in it. Then it started to rain and I was filled with this emotion of ‘wow—I’m not getting wet,’” Bua said. “Children love womb like spaces and small spaces. And that was how I first experienced building your own dwelling essentially, or putting it together out of reused material.”
b-home Studio grew in fits and starts over the years, with Bua inviting other artists to add their own structures to the landscape—over 50 in total, though some were temporary, evolving and changing over the years.
There’s the a-frame house—lowercase “a” that is, squat and curvy—and a faux-Tudor-style construction that Bua christened the Chapel of Sophia, after the goddess of wisdom. One structure, built by Max and Miles Goldfarb, is shingled with records, and aptly named Tower of LP Power. (Some are actually on wheels, so Bua does have a little flexibility should he wish to take part of the settlement with him somewhere.
There is even a fully winterized little cabin that Bua built so he could stay overnight on his land, upgrading from the tent he slept in initially. (In lieu of traditional plumbing, he installed a composting toilet, and a solar oven for heat.)
But now Bua lives a 10-minute drive away in a traditional home with his wife and their blended family. He’s ready to move on to the next chapter—and hopeful he can find a new steward for b-home Studio.
“The dream would be somebody else would show it love, and edit, and do whatever they need to do with it,” Bua said.
”But you have to be open to the change for good.”
You can read the original article at news.artnet.com