It’s fun and really very sweet to sit over cocktails with Peter E. Roberts and Melody Postma. Friends for decades, it is heartwarming to witness their easy back-and-forth camaraderie and their laughter as they recount shared memories.
Both graduated from SCAD in the late 80s – Roberts (b.1964) with a BFA in Video, and Postma (b.1966) with a BFA in Illustration.
That was back in the days when it wasn’t prohibitive for young college kids without much money to afford rent.
“We lived in a big house on Waldburg together with a bunch of roommates. Those were some parties!” Roberts recalls, while Postma adds, “Savannah was a little seedy back then. SCAD really hadn’t branched out much. At night, the city rolled up the sidewalks and there wasn’t much for crazy art students to do.” Roberts picks up again, “I think, being gay, we were both ‘other’ from the art crowd, and then we were ‘other’ from the gay crowd because we were artists. But we made our own mayhem!”
After SCAD, Roberts went on to have a career in TV advertising and production, concurrently designing invitations and other paper products that led to several Graphic Design USA Awards, while Postma made a living through decorative painting and furniture design.
“A lot of murals at the Landings; a lot of marshes on the marsh!” she laughs.
Thoroughly over painting marsh scenes, the death of her mom in 2004 was the impetus for Postma to take the leap of faith and start making her own art full-time.
Both friends clearly adored their mothers, and view their art as a cathartic part of their grief process.
Roberts says, “When my mom died that’s what made me start making my own work. I had my first solo show nine years ago for my fiftieth birthday.”
He describes the show as bringing his mother “back into the room.”
“Me too!” interjects Postma, “I use a lot of family images and a lot of pictures of my mom.”
Postma’s art focuses on nostalgic, collaged, acrylic-based paintings that incorporate mid-century images and photographs on wood panels.
“I’ve always been into mixed media. I’m the oldest in the family and I inherited all the old pictures, all the old motel postcards, and have all the stories in my head. I started sifting through the photos after my mom died and it all fell into place. And it was a way of keeping my mom around.”
Roberts produced Postma’s first show at the now defunct Tango on Tybee Island.
“It was an afternoon drop-by, and she sold a ton of work. It was fun!” he remembers.
Robert’s first show, “Elsewhere,” was a series of papercut images of maps connecting identically named places in the United States such as Fairfield, New Jersey and Fairfield, California, which incorporated an image of something that made the places famous.
“My mom loved maps. In the summer, we were always in the car. She taught school so she was off work, and we did a lot of day trips, a lot of backroads,” he recalls fondly. “And with her being a teacher, we made a lot of dioramas together….that’s what inspired the whole layered cutting thing in my work.”
The theme of road trips leads our conversation to turn to the friends’ joint show, Post Roads, opening at Location Gallery on July 15.
“We’d always talked about doing a show together,” Peters says, “Melody is really good at the whole vintage, pop, romance-of-the-road, and roadside attractions vibe, and I fall right in that lane. So, I thought, let’s do something around that theme.”
Each artist has created a new body of work, billed as ‘a cross country conversation of vintage pop culture roadside travels.’
For example, Postma has an image of a pink Cadillac buried headfirst at Cadillac Ranch, along Route 66 west of Amarillo, Texas which she’s overlaid with vintage postcards, maps, an iconic cartoon of a cowboy on a rearing stallion, and a vintage neon sign for the Desert Air Motel (proudly offering refrigerated air), while an intricately cut-out wicker basket sitting behind trees is Roberts’ rendition of the world’s largest basket – the seven-story corporate headquarters of the Longaberger Basket Company in Newark, Ohio.
Postma says she is excited to juxtapose her more “messy” work with Robert’s more sterile and “clean” style.
“As you go through the exhibition, there are conversations on postcards happening between our pieces, from me to her and from her to me, ” Roberts tells me.
When I ask him to explain further how the postcards connect the show, he gives the example of them both making images of Roswell, New Mexico.
In Postma’s piece she overlays the words “Roswell Thing” (referring to the July 1947 recovery of debris many thought to be from an alien aircraft) with vintage signs for a Best Western Motel and a Space Age Lodge, while Peters presents a perfectly cut-out rendering of the town’s International UFO Museum and Research Center.
The postcard placed between the two images is from Peters to Postma, and reads, “I looked all over this place and saw NOTHING like we saw on Tybee Island that night!”
The two dissolve into giggles… “We actually saw a UFO,” Peters explains. “We were lying in the sand on Tybee,” Postma picks up, “And we were like, ‘Oh my God! Did you see that?’ We were dumbfounded.”
Other images each artist renders include the iconic South of the Border landmark, Atlantic City, New York, and Florida’s Weeki Wachee Springs.
Postma was raised in Clearwater, Florida, where her grandfather had a string of motels, and she enjoys referencing the legendary mermaid shows featured at Weeki Wachee natural springs, and the curvaceous bikini-clad Southern Belles displaying their waterskiing expertise at Florida’s first theme park, Cypress Gardens.
The friends laugh as they recall childhood road trips.
“That’s the common thread for both of us,” Roberts says, “I don’t think I got on a plane ‘til I was 18. We were just stuffed into cars! Growing up in Connecticut in the 70s during the energy crisis meant that crossing a state line was a BIG deal.” Postma continues, “I remember all you could see at night was those neon signs for motels.”
It was a time of roadside signs everywhere – including the ‘See Rock City’ signs painted on over 900 barn roofs and walls which Roberts depicts in one of his pieces.
“We are among the last generation to actually remember all this…your parents driving with the windows rolled down, smoking cigarettes, having coffee out of the thermos. Remember you’d put down the glove box and it had a table? Cars were meant for road trips!”
Come get nostalgic with Postma and Roberts! Gallery profits from the show will benefit ARTS Southeast; “A good pairing” in Roberts’ opinion, “because they give a lot of opportunity for up-and-coming artists to show. When Melody and I graduated from SCAD, there really weren’t places to show work. I appreciate what ARTS Southeast is doing and I think its’s important.”
‘Post Roads’ is on display at Location Gallery, 251 Bull Street, from July 15 through August 19 with an opening reception on Saturday, July 15 from 4-7 p.m. More information can be found at locationgallery.net and @locationgallery on Instagram.
Melody Postma is represented by ShopSCAD and was commissioned by SCAD to paint a concourse mural and other works for the Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta (which later led to a new commission with the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation).
Her work can be viewed at melodypostma.com and @melodypostma.
Peter E. Roberts’ work can be viewed in the Jepson Center’s giftshop, at petereroberts.com, and @petereroberts.
This article appears in Connect Savannah | July 2023.
