Roberta Gedart Meister painted “Lost at Sea” over a bright pink canvas her grandmother purchased at a thrift store many years ago. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

BY SHERI TRUSTY

Roberta Gedert Meister combines her journalism and her art in her work “Midnight Stand” featuring a mayfly. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

PORT CLINTON – Roberta Gedert Meister began college as an art major, but she decided she didn’t want to be a teacher and she didn’t want to start her adult life as a struggling artist. So she switched her major to journalism, worked for local newspapers for years, and this month, her art is featured in the exhibit, “Three for the Road,” along with artists Ginny Mancini and Barbara Everett.

One of her pieces, “Midnight Stand,” incorporates her journalism into her art. “Midnight Stand” was inspired by her 1995 newspaper story about mayflies headlined, “Whatever you call them, they’re pests.” Meister playfully incorporated words from the story into the painting.

In her artist’s statement of the work, Meister says that journalism is “not so different from painting.”

“Both start with looking closely at something everyone else has walked past. Both ask: what is actually happening here, and how do I help someone see it?” she wrote.

Meister said a reporter chooses a leading quote “the way a painter chooses which color to lay down first.” She said editing is brushwork and layering adds truth to artwork.

“In the painting, I went back to the language of my reporting, and the words I once arranged into paragraphs are now arranged into a wall of text from which Port Clinton’s favorite little insect, the infamous mayfly, emerges,” she wrote.

Just like Meister recognizes future headlines in life’s small moments, she also sees beauty in places that seem old and unneeded. She transformed a bright pink canvas her grandmother bought at a garage sale into a tranquil water landscape called “Lost at Sea,” and she turned an old window pane into a picturesque boat full of daisies.

“I once painted a guitar. I like to find fun things to paint,” she said.

Roberta Gedart Meister talks about her work, “Orange Crush,” that she painted in college before switching her major to journalism. (Photo by Sheri Trusty)

Meister spent years finding creative ways to tell stories with words, but she never lost her ability to tell stories with paint. She has held many labels, including reporter and staff writer. Maybe she should add one more: brushstroke-journalist.

The “Three for the Road” exhibit runs through Oct. 4 at TAG, located at 317 W. Perry St. in Port Clinton. For more information, visit www.gpcaac.org.