CRESTVIEW — The Crestview Area Chamber of Commerce’s Arts and Culture Committee has several ideas to advance its mission, its chairperson said during its October meeting.

Several projects that chairperson Rae Schwartz said the committee could be effective in supporting include:

• The developing Crestview community theatre troupe formed by a group from the Journey Java Connection coffee shop

• The Friends of the Arts organization’s performing arts events held as fundraisers to maintain the Warriors Hall grand piano it acquired for the city

• An effort to bring a performance by the Northwest Florida Symphony Orchestra to Warriors Hall 

• A discussed downtown arts and crafts festival, possibly in conjunction with the Main Street Crestview Association and area restaurants

• An international food and culture festival representing the diverse nations and cultures represented in the Crestview area

• Displaying local visual artists’ works for the business community at monthly chamber of commerce breakfasts.

Schwartz entertained suggestions by Tom Moody, long-time chamber member and former chairperson of several chamber committees, that he said would help her committee refine its focus and mission.

While the committee serves as a sort of brokerage between disparate community cultural and arts groups and potential business patrons, Moody expressed concern that it could also be duplicating some organizations’ efforts more than serving as a liaison between them and the business community.

Schwartz, who is involved in several of the local arts organizations, including being president of the Okaloosa Arts Alliance, the county’s official arts agency, welcomed Moody’s suggestions, saying, “I’ve been secretary many times but this is the first time I’ve been chairman of a chamber committee.”

Moody and Schwartz discussed providing an arts and culture component to the April 6, 2013, downtown Triple-B barbecue festival. Relevant booths at Main Street’s south end would form a sort of “cultural village.”

Schwartz praised the helpfulness of Moody’s recommendations and urged committee members to pitch in to help as goals solidify.

“We do want this year to show productivity,” she said. “To be effective, we need commitment from committee members.”

An idea the committee earlier embraced was opening the chamber’s online calendar of events to all community organizations as a central community-planning calendar. In conjunction, the committee hosted a calendar and marketing workshop the evening of Oct. 15 with an instructional component featuring chamber members’ marketing tips and advice.

A community’s cultural life is a factor in encouraging a business to locate — or relocate — there, Schwartz said. It’s also a factor when families decide where they wish to move to raise their children. It’s so important, in fact, that the Crestview Area Chamber of Commerce formed the Arts and Culture Committee this year to be a liaison between the business and cultural communities.

“This is a new committee, with the opportunity to make substantial and innovative contributions to the chamber, to area arts and to the community,” Schwartz said.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Chamber of Commerce Arts and Culture Committee gains focus

NICEVILLE—If you think Broadway tunes are stodgy old pieces out of the Great American Songbook celebrating beautiful mornings, having a dream, dreaming impossible dreams and climbing ev’ry mountain, you haven’t been to the musical theatre in, oh, about 40 years. While Broadway hasn’t lost its traditional sound, it certainly has added a beat.

Catalogue musicals have embraced pop music, stepping beyond shows woven around the classic songs of Rodgers and Hart and the brothers Gershwin to include shows incorporating the classic rock of ABBA (“Mama Mia”), the Four Seasons (“Jersey Boys”), Billy Joel (“Movin’ Out”) and, gasp, the Bee-Gees (“Saturday Night Fever”).

Original shows with a decidedly rock-n-roll beat can be traced back to Galt MacDermot’s “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” “Hair,” which opened off-Broadway in 1967 before moving onto the Great White Way—and the musical theatre mainstream—a year later.

“Hair” opened the door to rock-score-based musicals including Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 1971 musical “Jesus Christ Superstar,” based on his 1970 rock opera.

With rock music firmly entrenched on Broadway, the genre naturally progressed to successful long-running shows such as today’s “Wicked” and “Mama Mia,” and minor disasters such as “Taboo,” based on the life of Boy George. Though it ran for two years on the West End, the New York version was heavily rewritten and lasted just 100 performances.

Broadway’s rock scores now come in a staged rock-concert-format to the Mattie Kelly Arts Center at Northwest Florida State College at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 11. Broadway rock and pop hits include numbers from “Wicked,” “Jersey Boys,” “Rent,” “The Who’s Tommy,” “Mamma Mia,” “Smokey Joe’s Café,” “Hair” and “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

With a five-piece rock band, the show features “American Idol’s” Shannon McGrane and Broadway stars Carrie Manolakos (“Mamma Mia,” “Wicked”), Justin Matthew Sargent (taking a leave from his lead role in “Rock of Ages”), Shelley Thomas (“Rent,” “Brooklyn”) and Dustin Brayley (Trans-Siberian Orchestra, “Saturday Night Fever”) and Darren Ritchie (“Wonderland,” “Dracula,” “Little Shop of Horrors”).

Adding a local twist, the Northwest Florida State College Soundsations show choir and Raider Rhythms dance team will join the Broadway stars in several musical numbers. The student performers include Elise Jenkins and Hanna Kania of Crestview.

Tickets are on sale now at the Mattie Kelly Arts Center box office for $35. Purchase online at www.mattiekellyartscenter.org, by phone or in-person from the box office, 729-6000. The box office opens at 6 p.m. the night of the show for any remaining seats.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: 'Broadway Rox' runs Oct. 11

CRESTVIEW—Remember elementary school? One day, you’re king of the hill before becoming the object of ridicule as the oaf who dropped his books (or worse, his lunch tray) all over the floor. However, that’s OK, because you made it up the next day by being your classroom’s champion book reader, speller or rope skipper.

Who could be more qualified to capture those many moments of triumph — tempered by the occasional moment of embarrassment — than a veteran educator? Many visiting Walker Elementary School parents, guardians and grandparents, eager to conduct the business of the day, may never have noticed the series of watercolors in the school office.

After 11 years as the News Bulletin’s editor through most of the 1980s, Bob Overturf completed his college studies and became a teacher at Walker. He never lost his love of painting, a hobby he started in the 1960s. In this modest collection, he captured the kids he encountered over a many-year career.

In November 2011, an exhibit of many of his works opened at the Crestview Public Library. However, the Walker collection of eight whimsical, watercolor washes was not represented. That makes it special: To savor the caricatures of typical school kids, you have to go right to the source. Just observing the throng of kids that fills the hallways, classrooms and playgrounds, you can instantly identify the personality in each drawing.

“I think he’d always done a lot of cartooning,” Overturf’s widow Dr. Marilyn Overturf said of her husband during the opening reception for the library exhibit.

There’s the happy little girl jumping rope, the fleet-footed field day runner, the happy reader, the enthused finger-painter, the eager scholar, and yes, even the lass tripping and sending her stack of textbooks flying.

How intimately we’ve known each personality, because each of us, at one time or another, has been each one of those kids.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Agony, ecstacy of elementary school appears in caricatures

NICEVILLE — The 36th Annual Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival is Oct. 19-21 at the Mullet Festival grounds site at the corner of State Road 85 North and College Boulevard.

Admission prices are $10 Friday, $10 Saturday before 5 p.m. and $15 after 5 p.m., and $10 Sunday. Children ages 11 and under are admitted free.

Advance tickets cost $9 each or three for $25 and can be ordered at http://boggybayoumulletfestival.info.

The 2012 headliners announced include The Molly Ringwalds, Colt Ford, Jake Owen and Kellie Pickler, who will perform on Sunday.

In addition to food, the Mullet Festival offers arts and crafts, clothing, jewelry and other goods, collectibles and merchandise, carnival rides and booths, cartoon characters, and local and top name entertainment.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Pickler to headline Boggy Bayou Mullet Festival

CRESTVIEW—Remember elementary school? One day, you’re king of the hill before becoming the object of ridicule as the oaf who dropped his books (or worse, his lunch tray) all over the floor. However, that’s OK, because you made it up the next day by being your classroom’s champion book reader, speller or rope skipper.

Who could be more qualified to capture those many moments of triumph — tempered by the occasional moment of embarrassment — than a veteran educator? Many visiting Walker Elementary School parents, guardians and grandparents, eager to conduct the business of the day, may never have noticed the series of watercolors in the school office.

After 11 years as the News Bulletin’s editor through most of the 1980s, Bob Overturf completed his college studies and became a teacher at Walker. He never lost his love of painting, a hobby he started in the 1960s. In this modest collection, he captured the kids he encountered over a many-year career.

In November 2011, an exhibit of many of his works opened at the Crestview Public Library. However, the Walker collection of eight whimsical, watercolor washes was not represented. That makes it special: To savor the caricatures of typical school kids, you have to go right to the source. Just observing the throng of kids that fills the hallways, classrooms and playgrounds, you can instantly identify the personality in each drawing.

“I think he’d always done a lot of cartooning,” Overturf’s widow Dr. Marilyn Overturf said of her husband during the opening reception for the library exhibit.

There’s the happy little girl jumping rope, the fleet-footed field day runner, the happy reader, the enthused finger-painter, the eager scholar, and yes, even the lass tripping and sending her stack of textbooks flying.

How intimately we’ve known each personality, because each of us, at one time or another, has been each one of those kids.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Agony, ecstacy of elementary school appears in caricatures

CRESTVIEW — The world, as interpreted by painter Rita Benz, unfolds on Crestview Public Library’s north exhibition wall, and it’s an enjoyable, interesting look at subjects ranging from fascinating world locations to nature at its most glorious to people in various frames of mind.

The subjects’ diversity makes the exhibit, which will be up until the end of October, particularly intriguing. I found her paintings of individuals especially captivating. Now and then, an artist exhibits works that force the viewer to pause and contemplate. Several of Benz’s people portraits do just that.

What was going on that captured that child’s interest in the flickering candle in “Mesmerized”? What is behind the young man in the T-shirt’s pensive look in “Intensity”?And what’s the story behind the sobering image of a youth in a hoodie in a cold wintery park in a painting called “Lost Soul,” a title that only increases the enigma?

These and Benz’s other people paintings fill the viewer with curiosity, empathy and even compassion, drawing you back after you’ve admired works such as her lively, colorful flowers and the delightful flitting butterflies in “Monarch.”

As an art lover infected with wanderlust, I likewise appreciated Benz’s series of travel paintings from Rome. The simplicity of the artist’s style leaves it up to the viewer to imagine the splash of the “Vatican Fountain” or the burble of the Tiber River as it flows through the Eternal City.

How an artist views his or her world on canvas, or in other media, also offers the viewer a glimpse into the artist’s soul.

Step into Rita Benz’s world — and, perhaps, peer into her soul — at the Crestview Public Library.  

Artist Rita Benz’s exhibit is open during regular library hours.

Monday and Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Wednesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: Rita Benz’s paintings on exhibit at library