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Woman Brings Ideas, People Together, Helping Dreams Come True

Story and photo by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

In pursuit of his dream to be a full-time artist, Rance Currie of East St. Louis was selling a few of his pieces but continued his “day job” at a bank to put food on the table.

“My goal is to be a full-time artist,” Currie said, acknowledging now is not the best time to be launching an art career. “It’s rough; the economy is bad; I haven’t made it.”

Currie, at 49, has been an artist for 25 years, he said and is more than ready to focus on his art.

Enter Julie Orlet-Schoen, a woman with more ideas in a week than the average person has in a lifetime. Orlet-Schoen assists her brother, Jim Orlet in managing The Vineyard and The Abbey in Belleville; what was at one time a religious bookstore with a coffee shop that has now evolved into a store continuing to carry books but featuring fair trade items for sale.

For the past five years, the store has featured a new artist monthly, hanging the artist’s work in the shop and giving someone with potential a place to display his or her work.

Currie heard about the store and the possibilities. He met Orlet-Schoen, and her wheels began turning. How to marry the ideas of fair trade with a talented artist? Again, ideas began surfacing.

Currie works mainly in copper, and he produced a two-dimensional piece that struck Orlet-Schoen. It said: “God Is.”
Currie credits Orlet-Schoen as a “mentor, advisor and extreme motivator.” Some of his works have sold, and others still hang in the shop. He’s now working on a piece that says: “I Am.”

Orlet-Schoen wants to market Currie’s work, and hopefully start a co-op to employ people in East St. Louis to do some of the cutting for his art.

“Instead of sending this to China to be produced, why can’t we do it here?” she asked.

A quick study, she learned about co-ops in 2007 when she accompanied her son, Sam, then a senior at Althoff Catholic High School, who went to Honduras for his senior service project.

Now, she works with others, including Pam Klekner who also went to Honduras in 2006, to assist with and expand on the co-ops. The Vineyard also carries some of the items made in Honduras to support and encourage fair trade among customers.

Orlet-Schoen and Klekner expect to travel to Honduras to help nurture another co-op, one that was started to help campesinos sell coffee beans instead of accepting less than $2.00 a day to pick the beans for corporations.

Althoff’s students, among others, helped raise enough money for the farmers to buy a pickup truck to take their beans to market.

While Orlet-Schoen continues to promote fair trade and promising artists, Currie is “thrilled. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

For more information on artists and fair trade products, please call 394-2050 or visit their web site at www.thebellevilleabbey.com.