Mount Adams ascension

Mount Adams ascension, one of a series of woodcut prints the young Flora rendered for the Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati's August 1941 publication, Life Association News. The images accompanied an article entitled "Where to go ... What to do ... While you're in Cincinnati." These woodcuts have not been republished since their first appearance seven decades ago. The location of the original wood blocks is unknown.

Ohio

This three-tiered montage appeared in Fortune magazine in 1947 as part of a 48-state series sponsored by the Container Corporation of America. Flora, an Ohio native, was commissioned to illustrate his birth state. A color version—as it ran in Fortune—was reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. Tearsheets turn up periodically on Ebay.

The above greyscale version—presumably the original, described as "watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paperboard"—is in the Smithsonian collection, according to their online catalog. It's not clear if the original is black and white and colorization was added at the magazine print stage, or if the image was converted to greyscale for the Smithsonian's database. A phone call to the Smith would resolve the matter. It's on our to-do list.

The First Five Years

Detail, The First Five Years, acrylic on wood, ca. early 1970s. The second of six horizontal tiers depicting incidents during the artist's childhood. Exactly what these figures represent—good question.

CCA elderly gent

Detail from "Ohio," full-page illustration commissioned by Container Corporation of America, 1947. The montage (fully reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, page 167) originally appeared in several nationally distributed magazines, including Fortune and Time. A detail previously posted here came from a scan of the magazine tearsheet. The above detail originated from a higher-resolution color print issued in 1948 by CCA.

As their name implies, CCA manufactured containers. The one pictured in cross-section above was designed to compactly contain a fully appendaged human male, one piece of furniture, and austere bric-a-brac. Drainpipe and barrel sold separately.

CCA train and bull

Detail, "Ohio," illustration for Container Corporation of America

Fortune magazine, 1947

Back to Bellefontaine

Update: Two prints sold. Edition now available at JimFlora.com.

Now listed on eBay: a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of an uncirculated 1963 Flora tempera painting, Back to Bellefontaine. Flora was born in Bellefontaine, Logan County, Ohio, in 1914, and lived there until 1934, when he enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

Only 25 prints were produced for this edition. Prints #25/25 and 24/25 are being offered at the launch price of $200/ea. Prices will increase for subsequent prints as the edition depletes.

Flora wrote: "Bellefontaine was a town of about nine thousand people, in the center of Ohio. At that time there were no televisions, radios, dishwashers, or jet planes. There were a lot of horses but very few automobiles. A boy could sit on the curb for an hour before an automobile passed by so he could wave at it.

"My parents were born in the 19th century and Bellefontaine was a typical 19th century midwestern town. It suited them admirably, but by the time I reached boyhood, the town was in transition entering the 20th century. So many things were happening at once: electricity, telephones, socialism, radios, automobiles, bobbed hair, movies, short skirts. It was a yeasty time, but through it all most of the 19th-century values persisted. We learned self-discipline, politeness, good manners, doing one's chores with a minimum of grumbling, neatness, cleanliness, and all of the other social graces that get one through life with the least amount of abrasion and lost motion."

Back to Bellefontaine has not previously been published or reproduced.

Mount Adams Winter Scene (1937)

Mount Adams Winter Scene (1937) was painted by Flora while studying at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and is the only existing color work from his academy days. It may, in fact, be the earliest existing Flora work—period. (There are undated student-era sketches.)

The style, of course, does not reflect Flora's future direction. At the academy he was training to be a fine artist, and such were his aspirations. It's ironic that in the depths of the Great Depression, Flora—the student—was painting on canvas. By the time he was certified by the Academy in 1939, and throughout the World War II years when he was employed (successfully) as a commercial artist, Flora rarely, if ever, painted on canvas. Existing private works from 1938 to 1945 are on paper, artist board, cardboard, blocks of wood, onionskin, postcard scraps, vellum, and occasionally on the backs of convention brochures, printer's proofs, rejected drafts—anything with a blank surface. Wartime rationing had been imposed by the government, but it couldn't suppress Flora's artistic impulses.

The oil on canvas, which measures 26" x 32", hangs at the Flint (Michigan) Institute of Arts, where it is part of the museum's Regionalists Collection. The work is cataloged as a "gift of Pat Glascock and Michael D. Hall in honor of Pat’s parents Charles R. and Nadine V. Patterson." Flora fan Andy Gabrysiak dropped us a note: "I saw it there myself a few weeks ago. It's beautiful!"

Train kept a-rollin'

Choo-choo, woo-woo! Another small segment from a larger work (also featured in its entirety in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora). No date attributed to this work, nor is it titled, but its whistle has a familiar refrain.

Jim Flora's affinity for the railroad yard and its denizens dates back to the mid-1930s when he returned to his home state of Ohio after exploring a brief scholarship granted to him by the Boston Architectural League, unfortunately cut short by economic hardships of the Depression. Flora's uncle, a night foreman for the Cincinnati Railroad Terminal Roundhouse, procured the architectural dropout a job wiping soot from steam locomotives for 25 cents an hour. It was nephew Jim's rent gig for the next two years while he attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati.