The "bang, bang, bang!" in the background at Artisan's Asylum sounds startlingly like gunshots, but Ecco Pierce assures that it's only one of her compatriots at work.
"Your first impression when you walk in here is overstimulation," says Pierce, a 28-year-old multimedia artist. "The place is never quiet. It's never empty. It's a 24-hour establishment inhabited by daytime professionals, evening hobbyists and nighttime fanatics."
Strange, blinking robots hold court alongside fine artists, engineers, welders, woodworkers and other craftsmen, many of whom offer classes in their 150 studio spaces in the old Ames Envelope building in Somerville.
This rapidly growing amalgam of talent began in 2010, when a mechanical engineer and a costume designer were looking for a place where they could make things in their spare time.
The two rented 1,000 square feet in the Taza Chocolate factory and, to keep costs down, invited their friends on Facebook to share the space, expecting a dozen or so to take them up on the offer.
When 100 people showed up at their first meeting, they knew they were on to something.
"We've evolved from being a clubhouse for fun to being a real small-business incubator," said Molly Rubenstein, director of education and outreach. "And we feel like there's a lot of potential to do even more."
MassChallenge, the world's largest startup accelerator, selected Artisan's Asylum and 127 other finalists to compete for a share of more than $1.5 million in cash prizes.
"We're not trying to get to market; we're already here," Rubenstein said. "What we came to MassChallenge looking for was help planning our long-term evolution."
Artisan's Asylum is exploring working with local schools to teach youngsters real-world skills in science, technology, engineering, art and math, or STEAM.
And it wants to expand the training it offers in advanced manufacturing, an industry that will need to fill an estimated 100,000 jobs in the state over the next decade.
"Part of what we want to do is bring back the appeal of being a skilled tradesman," Rubenstein said. "We want to make sure that once you have a prototype, you don't send it over to China to be manufactured when it can be made right here."
Artisan's Asylum is "one of a very small number of pioneers in the maker space" qualified to provide that kind of training, and it's looking for potential partners who can help it scale nationally and internationally, said Mark Allio, a MassChallenge mentor and regional director of the Massachusetts Small Business Development Center at UMass Boston.
"I think they have a pretty clear vision of the value they add," Allio said, "and MassChallenge could help them expand to have an even bigger impact."
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