ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, September 4, 1996 TAG: 9609040131
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: TED ANTHONY ASSOCIATED PRESS
America's ubiquitous landscapes of slick neon signage unsettle John Baeder. He favors back roads both urban and rural - windows, stores, walls and garages adorned with simple, honest exhortations.
``No loud cussing please,'' one hand-lettered sign admonishes gently. ``All type hot peppers sold here,'' announces another. A third, ever so cryptic, issues this warning: ``Thing inside house.''
For much of his life, Baeder has scoured America's less-polished commercial byways, recording the banners that captured his imagination. Now, in ``Sign Language: Street Signs as Folk Art,'' he is sharing 205 examples from his voluminous collection of hand-painted and hand-lettered signs, amassed through three decades of documentary photography.
``This is what I call the music and language of the street,'' says Baeder, 57, a Nashville, Tenn., artist and former ad man who grew up in the South. He spent much of his childhood on its back roads, where he saw the signs that first piqued his interest.
``Someone's making a sign, they don't know that they're touching someone's soul,'' he says. ``They're making a sign because they have a need to express themselves. They need to say something. And they do it with a certain amount of raw power.''
A connecting strand unifies Baeder's diverse pictures: unadorned expression, ``a breath of fresh air'' in a complicated world filled with an unrelenting barrage of high-tech visual imagery.
``I'm pretty bored and disgusted and tired of the way technology has taken over so much of our visual culture,'' he says. ``It doesn't have that sort of sweet, friendly simplicity it used to have.''
How true. A tour across today's expressway exits and miracle mile strips can be a panorama of slickness in the form of Exxon signs, golden arches and three-foot letters that spell out Wal-Mart.
``Some people don't get out of the shopping mall and the 'burbs. But there are other subcultures that are right next door to you,'' Baeder says.
Looking at his track record, it is hardly surprising that this interest found him. This is a man who has collected roadside images since his childhood in Georgia, who says diners remind him of ``temples from lost civilizations'' and has spent much of his life painting them.
``Diners'' (1978) showcased his diner art. And ``Gas, Food and Lodging'' (1984), was a paean to his roadside postcard collection.
But those books focused on processed commercial imagery. In ``Sign Language,'' Baeder has tapped into a world of hand-lettered fonts, poster paints and words so cluttered and unplanned that the last few letters often are squished into skinniness to fit on the sign.
An unlikely milieu to glorify, perhaps, but they do shine in their amateurishness.
Some are adorned with rough drawings, others with capable artwork. They sometimes appear on such unlikely places as car doors, Dumpsters, entire sides of houses. The most fun are the indecipherable ones, where people had ideas but didn't quite get them across:
``NO.JAIL.FOR.ME
WE.HAVE.A.ELECTRIC EYE''
Or:
``NO PARKING
NO HUMOUR
+ TOW''
Go figure that one out.
But it doesn't matter that the expression is a little rough or if the sign says ``Lost Cat,'' ``No Menus'' or ``PLESE DONT BLOCK DRIVEWAX.'' Popular culture's roads less traveled will always appeal to Baeder.
He believes the world needs to be made more personal, and if these outtakes of life - and the sentiment he reveals in the accompanying passages - can help, he's pleased.
``Sometimes this very primal form of communication is far more clear and heartfelt than the more sophisticated communication we're exposed to in the media. Because they're not trying - it comes straight from the heart,'' he says.
``I don't want to be taken as someone who is taking advantage of people who are illiterate or who cannot write with proper script,'' he says. ``These people are human beings. Maybe they weren't allotted the privileges we were, but they have this need to express themselves. And it happens to come out as a thing of beauty. If someone else only sees it as a sloppy written sign, that's OK. That's their vision. But this is mine.''
``Sign Language: Street Signs as Folk Art.'' Harry N. Abrams Inc. $19.95.
AP Nashville artist and writer John Baeder with examples from his collection of hand-painted and hand-lettered signs, amassed in three decades of documentary photography.
A few of the sayings etched on hand-lettered signs that John Baeder has recorded with his camera over the years:
``Coffee 20c Breakfast 75c/
DON'T STARVE
STOP''
On a wooden box:
``NOTICE
Any one gaught
stealing wood
will be proacuted
or shot''
``NO.JAIL.FOR.ME
WE.HAVE.A.ELECTRIC EYE''
``GOD WILL ANSER PRAYERS''
``WANTED GIRLS 18-OR OVER
TO LEARN WRESTLING''
``PUSh hA
rD ON
DOOr''
``BORKEN GLASS''
``WE SHORTEN MiNNi-SKiRTS''
``THING INSide HOUSE''
``POSNOBILLS''
``NO-LOAFiNG
ON-THiS-LOT''
``NO PARKING
NO HUMOUR
+ TOW''
``MEDERTATIONAL
HOUR-OF
PRAYER-AN-FAiTH''
LENGTH: Long : 136 linesby CNB