AUGUSTA, GA.— The Morris Museum of Art will screen, Baeder: Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats along the Way on Sunday March 8, 2009, at 2:00 p.m. in the museum’s auditorium. The new film documents the work, life, and personality of one of the most important photorealist painters working today, John Baeder. (To view clips from the film, visit http://www.youtube.com/user/FilmHouseInc).
“We are very pleased to host this special screening of Pleasant Journeys… For one thing, it’s only the second time it’s been shown in public; for another, it draws attention to this new film on John Baeder, an internationally renowned artist,” states Kevin Grogan, Director of the Morris Museum of Art and one of the executive producers of the film. “The film tells the story of a man whose passionate interest in diners has led him to become the leading chronicler of a uniquely American form of roadside architecture. John’s role as an historic preservationist sets him apart from his peers and identifies him as unique among contemporary realists.”
Production of the film was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Watson-Brown Foundation of Thomson, Georgia. Produced by Film House, the DVD includes the twenty-nine minute film Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats along the Way that was created in association with the Morris Museum of Art. The film includes interviews with, among others, former NEA chairman Bill Ivey; prominent collectors Alice Zimmerman, Howard Stringer, and Jewel and Barry Coburn; art historian Robert Mode; artist Marilyn Murphy, photographer Jim McGuire, museum directors Lois Riggins-Ezzell and Kevin Grogan; writer Dan Prince; and singer/songwriters Pat Alger, Kent Blazy, Fred Koller, Dave Pomeroy, and Guy Clark. Also included on the DVD is a photo portfolio of 275 images tracing every stage of Baeder’s remarkable career.
Baeder: Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats along the Way begins at 2:00 p.m. in the Morris Museum auditorium on Sunday, March 8. A conversation with John Baeder will follow the screening; and that will be followed by a DVD and book signing. Both the DVD and book, Pleasant Journeys and Good Eats along the Way: The Paintings of John Baeder (University Press of Mississippi), are available through the Morris Museum of Art store (www.themorris.org).
Film House - Film House (www.filmhouse.com) is Tennessee’s largest production company, producing hundreds of TV commercials and documentaries annually. Transcendent, a wholly–owned subsidiary, produces independent features such as “No Regrets,” starring Janine Turner and Kate Jackson, and "Two Weeks," starring two time Academy Award winner Sally Field. Transcendent's current project “Jubilee,” is based on the remarkable true story of Ella Sheppard and the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, who introduced Spirituals to the world in 1871.
Morris Museum of Art - Founded in 1985, the Morris Museum of Art is the oldest museum in the country that is devoted to the art and artists of the American South. The museum’s permanent collection of approximately five thousand paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures, dating from the late-eighteenth century to the present, is displayed in galleries dedicated to, among other things, antebellum portraiture, the Civil War, genre painting, still life, landscape, Southern Impressionism, and Modernism in the South. It is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., and on Sunday, noon–5:00 p.m. For more information about the Morris Museum of Art, visit the museum’s web site at www.themorris.org or call 706-724-7501.
