Arts event at Chipola Sunday

The 5th annual Sunday Afternoon with the Arts event is set for this Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m. in the Chipola Arts Center at Chipola College. Admission is free.
The day gives art lovers an opportunity to view the work of local and regional artists, and to watch some of them at work.
Suzanne Payne will demonstrating printing techniques, Dawn Prietz will do pottery, writer Dale Cox is scheduled to appear, jewelry-maker Leslie Longbottom is another participant, Karen Roland will be drawing, Jerry Whitson will be painting, and musician Anita Pizza will perform.
The Marianna High School Band, nature documentary filmmaker Elam Stoltzfus, Marianna High School art students and Little Theatre at Marianna founder Darryl Thompson are also on board for the event.
Sponsored by The Artists Guild of Northwest Florida and the Chipola Regional Arts Association, the event features the work of artists in Jackson, Washington, Holmes, Calhoun and Liberty counties.
The event will also include the opportunity for door prizes, and light refreshments will be available.
The displays will be at the Chipola Arts Center through Nov. 14 and can be viewed there on week days.
The Sunday event is also a run-up to a Gallery Walk at Chipola, scheduled for Nov. 14 from 9 a.m. until noon.
Debra Pelc Menacof is chairman for the annual event on Sunday, and will have several pieces on display, but her multi-media collage, “Whispers” won’t be among them. It has already been snatched up by a very happy new owner.
The art piece was purchased as a surprise for the owner, Pam Pichard, by some appreciative Jackson County Library Board members.
They paid for it out of their own pockets, and it now hangs in Pichard’s office in the Jackson County administration building. Pichard works there as the county’s administrative services director.
Pichard explained how she came to own the piece she fell in love with a few weeks ago.
“I saw it in the library after it went on display as part of the Artists Guild’s Art in Public Places program. It just really caught my eye. It has a lot of the colors I love, blues, teals,  and it was so unusual, ‘outside the lines,’ you might say,” Pichard commented in a play on words – Menacof’s new gallery takes that phrase as its name.
“It had wonderful, different textures, and it was such a creative expression. I saw mountains, rivers, lakes and streams, in this great abstract. It also has feathers and corn husks, Native American themes, which I also love. It just really spoke to me. Me, I can’t even draw a stick figure — you’d laugh if I tried — and I so admire creative people and what they can do,” she continued. “When I was at a library board meeting, I asked if they thought the artist would sell it to me on an installment plan because it was outside what I could afford all at once. They said, ‘it never hurts to ask,’ so I went back on another day to get her information off the card that was with it, and the piece was gone. I was heartbroken, but I had to accept it and told myself it just wasn’t meant to be for me to have it.”
But a couple of weeks ago, at a Jackson County Commission meeting, a library board member stepped up to speak.
She wasn’t on the agenda, and her appearance surprised Pichard, who would normally know exactly what was to come before the board.
The library board presented the work to Pichard at that meeting, in recognition of and in thanks for her many hours of service, after hours and unpaid, helping with a library renovation that included painting walls, re-shelving books and other labor.
Pichard was shocked, and couldn’t hold back the tears.
“First of all, I couldn’t believe they put it past me,” she said. “I couldn’t believe they did such a thing for me. I held up for a while, but when they gave me the card that went with it, I just lost it.”
Although “Whispers” won’t be at the show Sunday, many other creative works by area artists will be.
Menacof and the others involved are hoping to draw a big crowd to celebrate the arts together, and learn something of the process involved in their various projects.