Two young artists will be featured in a new exhibit at Haverford College. The works of Nicholas Cairns and Michael O'Keefe will be on display at the College's Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, April 2-May 2, 2004.
Cairns will show approximately 30 pieces, a mix of sculpture, paintings and drawings focusing on still lifes and human heads.“The head is a world unto itself, and presents many artistic possibilities,” he says.“By nature, it has a presence that makes painting or sculpting it interesting.”
O'Keefe's works include 12 pencil drawings and 18 plaster and cast bronze sculptures. They are all figurative pieces, he explains,“informed by the human form and psyche. They reflect my attachment to the history of art, which, in my understanding, has a direct connection to the human figure.”
Cairns, the son of sculptor and Haverford Professor of Fine Arts Christopher Cairns, received a bachelor's degree in religion from Oberlin College in Oberlin, OH in 1998 and studied sculpture and drawing at the New York Studio School and the Art Students League, both in New York, NY. He has exhibited at South End Open Studios in Boston, the Tower Hill School in Wilmington, and Station North Arts District Open Studios in Baltimore, where he currently lives.
O'Keefe graduated from Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA in 1999 with a bachelor's degree in art, and briefly attended the New York Studio School that same year. In the fall of 2000 he was an assistant in Haverford's department of fine arts. He now lives and works as an artist full-time in Brooklyn, NY. This is his first official gallery exhibit.
Located in Whitehead Campus Center, the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday and noon-5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. An opening reception for this exhibit will be held Friday, April 2 from 5-7 p.m. at the Gallery. Nicholas Cairns and Michael O'Keefe will give Gallery Talks Monday, April 19 at 4:15 p.m.
