Havertown Studio Open House, May 2010

For two days in early May 2010, sculptor Christopher Cairns, painter Nicholas Cairns, and composer Michael Hersch hosted an art and music open house in Chris’s 9,000-square-foot studio in Havertown, Pennsylvania.

The event, which attracted people from as far away as Massachusetts and Washington, DC, featured sculpture, painting, drawing, film and music.

On display in the multi-room studio were 25 paintings by Nicholas Cairns—including Dies Irae (2009) and Wreckage of Flowers (2009)—20 small prints and about 10 drawings.

                                          Installation, Nicholas Cairns

                                          Installation, Nicholas Cairns

Christopher Cairns presented a near-final version of his Rochbergtorium, an installation honoring his late friend, the composer George Rochberg.  Arranged in a 250-square-foot, skylit room, the Rochbergtorium included 25 sculptural heads of the composer in assorted sizes, styles, and mediums, a 12-minute video interview of Rochberg by Peter Cairns, and a small desk with scores, books and photos.  A recording by Peter Sheppard Skaerved of Rochberg’s Caprice Variations played on a continual loop.

                                                    Rochbergtorium

Elsewhere, Peter Cairns’ 2009 film about an NGO in Haiti, made just five months before the 2010 earthquake, played in a makeshift screening room in one corner of the cavernous studio.

Prints, drawings and watercolors by Alexis Cairns (yours truly) capped off the largely family affair.

A highlight of the event was the May 1^st performance of Michael Hersch’s Sonatas No.s 1 and 2 for unaccompanied cello, played by frequent Hersch collaborator Daniel Gaisford. Of Gaisford, Jay Nordlinger wrote in 2008, “In Daniel Gaisford, Hersch has found an ideal interpreter, an ideal exponent . . . Gaisford has a formidable technique and a formidable mind.  He can make a hundred sounds: fat, thin, spiky, lyrical, rich, sickly, piercing, warm, and Hersch’s sonatas call for a great many of them.”

                                                   Gaisford and Hersch

In a surprising coincidence, a review by Vivian Schweizer of the recording of Hersch’s cello sonatas, played by Gaisford, was printed in the New York Times on May 2^nd.  It read:

Michael Hersch’s Sonata No. 1 for unaccompanied cello is one of his earliest published works, written when he was 23, in 1994 . . . The sonata’s profoundly solitary, rhapsodic first movement veers between yearning lyricism and agitated outbursts. The reflective second movement, a showcase for Mr. Gaisford’s rich, penetrating tone and searing musicality, ebbs and flows into the harmonically rich final movement, with its virtuoso challenges and almost brutal intensity . . . Mr. Gaisford, who, to judge from this recording, deserves greater recognition, also offers a mesmerizing performance of Mr. Hersch’s seven-movement Sonata No. 2, composed in 2000.

                                                     Daniel Gaisford

The intense 70-minute performance took place in a 2,500-square-foot room in the center of the studio building, in front of an audience of about 75.

Artists who attended the open house included Pat Badt, Rick Bechtel, David Carrow, Bruce Colburn, Hilarie Johnston, Steve Larson, Michelle Post, Scott Sherk, Charles Stegeman, Kevin Tuttle, and Elizabeth Wade.

                                     Kevin Tuttle and Michael Cairns

NOTE: the Havertown Studio Open House (now called the Havertown New Music and Art Series) has become a regular event.  Join The Artist Profiles Project on Facebook to be notified of future dates.

 

For more photos of the open house please visit our Flickr page.

Photos above by Richard Anderson (from top, 1 & 2), Margo Cairns (3, 6, 7), and Kevin Tuttle (4 & 5).

Christopher Cairns at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, 2005

(Installation shot Closing Time)

(Installation shot Closing Time)

In April 2005, Christopher Cairns marked his retirement from Haverford College, after 35 years of teaching, with a solo show at the school called Closing Time. Twenty-seven life-sized figures, in bronze and plaster, invaded Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery en route from their former home in Cairns’ on-campus studio to a new home in a converted firehouse, now a studio, in nearby Havertown.

From Synagogue as AIDS Memorial to Lazarus Rising, the show featured some of Cairns’ most arresting work of the previous decade. Of particular note was the Rochbergtorium, an installation dedicated to his close friend, composer George Rochberg. Featuring plaster and bronze sculptural portraits, a painted portrait by son Nicholas Cairns, a video interview by son Peter Cairns, and a recording of Rochberg’s Caprice Variations by Peter Sheppard Skaerved, the Rochbergtorium functioned as a sort of living memorial.

(Synagogue as AIDS Memorial, plaster)

(Lazarus Rising, bronze, 1996, Lasalle University Art Museum)

(Rochberg head, wax)

Closing Time was reviewed by Philadelphia Inquirer art critic Victoria Donohue, who wrote, “Cairns has developed a life-long morally charged attitude toward his art and toward the portrayal of human life episodes…This show should go a long way in according Cairns his due recognition, for, by any standard, he is one of the truly accomplished sculptors working today.”

(The Mound, plaster)

Peter Cairns documented the show in a short film, below.

A statement by Cairns’ long-time friend Charlie Angermeyer was posted near the entrance. Read it here.

Closing Time was dedicated to Ingrid Muan, a friend and former student who died earlier that year at age 39. Two small paintings of Ingrid’s and a statement about her were included in the show.

See more photos from Closing Time on our Flickr page.

(Tanit, Electra, plaster)

(Spring, plaster)

(Evidence, plaster)

George Rochberg: Excerpt from a Video Interview

In early 2005 filmmaker Peter Cairns shot several hours of video interviews with George Rochberg at the composer’s home. A few months later, sculptor Christopher Cairns debuted his Rochbergtorium, an installation dedicated to his close friend, in which the interview excerpt below plays on a continual loop, surrounded by sculptural heads of the composer in various sizes and styles, accompanied by a recording of Rochberg’s Caprice Variations.

George Rochberg Interview, 2005 from The Artist Profiles Project on Vimeo.