John Baeder will sign copies of "John Baeder's Road Well Taken" at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Manuel's Tavern, 602 N. Highland Ave. N.E. For information, call A Cappella Books, 404-681-5128. manuelstavern.com.
When he was growing up in Atlanta, photorealist painter John Baeder had a Saturday ritual of riding his bicycle to the Majestic diner on Ponce de Leon, to drink a soda and maybe catch a double feature at the nearby Plaza Theater.
The Art Deco swoops and curves of the Majestic would long fascinate him, even after he moved to Manhattan to become an art director at McCann-Erickson, one of New York’s biggest ad agencies. He began painting large-scale photorealist canvases of diners and other classic roadside attractions, and, at the age of 33, Baeder quit advertising to paint full time.
Since then, he has become the visual poet of the American diner. A retrospective book of his work, “John Baeder’s Road Well Taken,” by Jay Williams, is out this month, and includes illustrations of 300 of Baeder’s watercolors and oils.
Baeder, 76, will sign copies of the book at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Manuel’s Tavern.
When Baeder was capturing portraits of diners and other roadside attractions, he was unknowingly preserving images of an endangered species. As interstate highways and franchise restaurants expanded, they helped push many diners out of existence.
Baeder moved to Nashville in 1980, and his roadside images expanded to include many scenes from around the South, including such notable establishments as Col. Poole’s Pig Hill-of-Fame barbecue restaurant in Ellijay.
