MEET THE MAKERS
A Day at the Artisan’s Asylum BY LILLY MILMAN | PHOTOS BY ADRIANNE MATHIOWETZ
The Artisan’s Asylum is one of the largest makerspaces in the country, and on any given day, you’re bound to run into a slew of local creators—all working on completely different projects. We dropped by one rainy Monday to capture a snapshot of what a typical afternoon in the building might look like. Dick Rubinstein specializes in crafting technical theater props, like the model of an early attempt at the computer he is currently working on for the Central Square Theater’s production of “Ada and the Engine.” The storage space and the shared facilities make the Asylum the perfect spot for Rubinstein— when he downsized to a condo, he lost his basement workshop space and needed to find a home for his prop materials. “But the best thing is the people here,” he says.
Michael Shonle’s most recent project is the E-corder, an all-electric version of a recorder that lights up and can make a wide range of sounds, like a keyboard. “It’s something I’ve always wanted somebody else to do, and nobody else was doing it,” he says.
22 Meet the Makers | scoutsomerville.com
Richard Driver and Michael Beach share a space, and they work together on a lot of three-dimensional printing work at the Asylum. As a result, their space is filled with all kinds of fun objects like this skull. Driver, a physicist, says this is where he goes to have fun: “I’m retired, so I just kind of play here.” Beach is a consulting engineer who spends his time teaching hands-on basic electronics courses with Driver.
