Sweetcake Enso Art Exhibit

Sweetcake Enso is putting on a traveling art exhibition. There’s a list of confirmed venues on the website. And Here’s the press release, with a cool piece by one of the participating artists, Max Gimblett. The first call for submissions ended September 1:

In American culture Zen is often represented by the Enso, a calligraphic circle, to the extent that the Enso can be regarded as a logo for a brand identity. However, the Enso is truly known for the singularity of the mark as an expression of both presentness and emptiness. Sweetcake Enso draws attention to the abstract circle as a symbol of presentness in daily life, and opens out the traditional calligraphy of the Enso to include the work of Buddhist artists that is thriving in the contemporary art context. Alongside of Zen Master Nonin Chowaney’s traditional calligraphy will be that of artists more internationally known in the contemporary art context, such as Sanford Biggers, Noah Fischer, and Max Gimblett. It will also include the work of local community artists, and is traveling from Zen center to Zen Center in order to showcase their work in the context of larger Buddhist community. There are currently five Zen Centers on the east coast that are participating in the exhibit: Empty Hand Zen Center, the Village Zendo, Brooklyn Zen Center, Zen Center of Syracuse, and the Rochester Zen Center; and two on the west, the Olympia Zen Center and the San Francisco Zen Center.

The inaugural exhibition at the Empty Hand Zen Center in New Rochelle coincides with the opening of the Hakuin show at the Japan Society, a very rare opportunity for people in this country to see the work of a Japanese Zen master of a distant century. Exhibited alongside of Hakuin at the Japan Society is the work of Max Gimblett, also in the Sweetcake Enso exhibitions. Sweetcake Enso exhibits are a tribute to the teachers who have come before us and those who are with us now, to an exchanging of the bones from one generation to the next. As these exhibits move from Zen center to Zen center they will be raising funds to support the tradition of the student-teacher relationship. An important component of these exhibitions is the website,  www.sweetcakeenso.blogpsot.com, which will feature the work of artists as well as the writings of prominent scholars and American Zen teachers. The inaugural Sweetcake Enso exhibit opens at the Empty Hand Zen Center, Saturday, October 2nd and Sunday October 3rd, from noon to 5:00. 45 Lawton Street, New Rochelle, New York. The Empty Hand Zen Center, www.emptyhandzen.org, is a venue in the New Rochelle Council of the Arts weekend Arts Fest. Please contact Susan Ji-on Postal (914) 636-1450, susanjion@aol.com for further information. For further inquiries, please contact: Catherine Spaeth, curator (914) 874-4994, Catherine.spaeth@gmail.com Website: www.sweetcakeenso.blogspot.com