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 find: | Creative Writing | U.S.A. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Eric Chaet |
 Eric Chaet performing with three of his ´signs´ behind him. |
I was raised on the south side of Chicago, among people one step above poverty -the children and grandchildren of immigrants
from Europe. The largest congregation of Poles outside of Warsaw was one block away...My mother insisted on interesting me in art
and music, and my father sent me to Hebrew classes. The day I entered Harper High was the day it was integrated and I found myself in
the midst of race riots... |
In 1986, I began silkscreening posters on cloth. The texts express ideas such as Seek Truth, Develop Capacities or
Help One Another Succeed. One of my projects has been to distribute these ´signs´ around the globe.
I know of 1,450 that have been publicly posted in 32 US States and seven other countries. Over the years various people have donated materials towards this project. |
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Billboard by Eric Chaet, The Turnaround Artist, 1998, 2 miles north of Plainfield, Wisconsin, U.S.A., 400 sq. ft. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The signs are for sale at $25 each or five for $100 (unframed). How to Change the World Forever for Better costs $10. Booklets of Creative Writing or of Poetry (currently 14 titles available) cost $5 each. Contact: Eric Chaet, 1803 County ZZ, DePere WI 54115-9629, U.S.A. Email: echaet@gbonline.com Poems: www.ericchaetpoems.com |
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State Street Chicago Beneath law, lie ocean, ape & dream branches & leaves wrestle & dance with wind roots reach elsewhere. Broke-nose Chicago ascends the lumbering bus jamming in aggravated swarms aboard or slowly thoughtful in worn clothes to feed the work addiction morning & streetlamp night. My grandmother on my father´s side rode by horse back from Pharaoh to Novgorod trained up to German coast emerged from ocean by boat at Baltimore & caught another connection thru doppler zones to this city. Trailing Assyria, caeser, czar of all Odessa & Kiev, hasid & ritual butcher. She met her man on day shift & lived behind a store front near black Africans, mafiosa & their wives and children, Irish cop & bars & tenors a stench of pig & steer massacres. I am only trying for a straight account of how I come to be walking up State sucking Chicago´s rusty teat dreaming and growing stronger. From: Poems for Uprising Ypsilanti Marlon Gillespie, 1997. Websites www.geocities.com/eric_chaet Poems on other websites "Self-Directed" at the Swiss site, Niederngasse: niederngasse.dragonfire.net "Gandhi & Chance" and "For Strangers" in English and Italian, at Mefisto: http://www.thetarget.it/~mefisto/index.html A Man Swerves His Car The Players - Chicago, 2000 Men Gandhi & Chance Stories on other websites Ionization The Coup 4 Guys, a Heap of Furniture, & a Highway Postcard January, 2000 post card, showing "signs" displayed in Sweden and Australia, at a Spanish- and English-language site: http://teleline.terra.es/personal/zenonyyo/mailartexpo.htm Eric Chaet has material on more sites, email him for a list of these. |
From: Artist Zero Hero,
collection of thoughts on art and poverty, 1998. MASTERWORKS An occasional work of art is snatched, nourished, & molded from out of the fury of the evil & mad stampede--that clarifies what is in the way of lives worth leading, &/or what resources are available to break out of the stampede &/or into a better life--&/or describes so precisely at least some property of the better life, that one need never again absolutely despair of its existence, no matter what anyone &/or everyone says, or cunningly (or by convention) withholds. From: Ionization, A story, 1997. ...The driver of an 18-wheeler braked...in the brightening dawn. Crunch of tires on gravel, dust rising. I ran for it. I climbed up, tried to get comfortable with my pack between my legs, & listened. ...He said he'd been a TV writer, dissident--silenced--then a movie stunt-man--in Prague. On the side, Wocek said, he drove a truckload of milk in from the Austrian border, daily. One day, he & his partner revved up the engine of the truck, climbed on top of the trailer, & lept over the railing of a bridge into the Danube. While they were swimming, border guards shot at them. The partner was killed. Wocek said he was the first one to make it to Austria in fourteen years. Then he drove trucks in Austria, Italy, & West Germany. Eventually, he was driving a regular route from West Germany to Iran--learning nine languages--thru Turkey, where he had to join convoys for safety against bandits...Til the Iran-Iraq war broke out. Then Wocek went to New York, then on to a Czech refugee community in Los Angeles... Wocek pulled to a stop by a camper in a ditch, its driver standing with snow falling on his disconsolate bald head. Another truck driver provided a chain, & Wocek manipulated our giant truck, and pulled the camper up & out. After returning the chain, he went over, & put his arm around the shoulders of the camper´s driver. "You should have CB radio, mister, " I heard Wocek tell him, with utmost solemnity... Excerpts from Arts Dialogue, December 1997, pages 12 - 13. |
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 Arts Dialogue, Dintel 20, NL 7333 MC, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands email: bafa@bahai-library.com |