duck-rabbit

SHED Projects is proud to partner with duck-rabbit coffee in Ohio City as an extension of our commitment to meeting audiences where they already gather. This ongoing collaboration transforms a beloved neighborhood café into a rotating exhibition site, offering artists and emerging curators the opportunity to present work in an accessible, public-facing environment outside traditional gallery walls.

Arts of Life collaboration curated by Travis Morehead opening Feb. 25 

Upcoming ShowS

Featuring artwork by: Billy Borgerd, Brian Reed, Danny Frownfelter, Dylan Goltz, Emory Jones, Kelly Stone, Laura Greenberg, Marcelo Añón, Nik Heusman, Renata Berdes, Raina “Tokyo” Carter, Saemee, Ted Gram-Boarini, Ted Hamel, Vontrell Nunn

No Water, No Moon
As the story goes, Chiyono was a servant in a zen convent who wanted to practice zazen. One day she asked an elderly nun, “If I can’t read or write and must work all the time, can I still attain the way of the Buddha?“ The nun replied, “There are no distinctions between people. People are complete as they are. If you don’t fall into delusive thoughts, there is only one complete nature. To know this true nature, turn toward the source of your delusive thoughts. This is called zazen.” 
Chiyono practiced zazen throughout her daily labors until, one night, she found enlightenment when drawing water from a well. The reflection of a full moon danced in her bucket, and then it broke: “With this and that I tried to keep the bucket together, and then the bottom fell out. Where water does not collect, the moon does not dwell.”*
Approaching this koan as an iconoclastic metaphor, the work gathered here plays on both sides of its rupture. Ground becomes figure. Fragments trace a whole. A point invokes periphery. Form conjures absence. Presence undoes effort. Each artist, in their way, illustrates the dialectical implications of where one stands in relation to the world. There is a moon for every bucket of water, and however we hold its image, the ground still holds us all. 
-Travis Morehead
*Chiyono’s enlightenment poem, 13th c.
shop art currently at duck-rabbit