Too Much Information - Part 1

One of our representatives will be with you shortly. Your visit is very important to us, and we look forward to answering your questions. Such as: What's up with the Flora blog, the website, and Jim Flora art in general? The paucity of new posts in recent months does not connote inactivity in the Florasphere. Here's breaking news—and news which has previously broken:

Flora co-archivist Barbara Economon and I have completed a new book—our fourth— for Fantagraphics: The High Fidelity Art of Jim Flora. It's a dual-purpose volume: 1) it replaces our long out-of-print and highly sought book from 2004, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, which featured the Flora album covers known to us at the time (along with a bunch of other cool stuff); and 2) it showcases the Flora album covers we knew in 2004 and others we've since discovered, along with a plethora of vintage Flora music-oriented art, most of which has not been previously published in our Flora anthologies. It rocks, it bops, and swings from the chandeliers. Projected publication: August or September. The book, which can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com, includes cheeky back cover blurbs from Gary Panter, Arnold Roth, James Lileks, Georgia Hubley, and Joost Swarte.

The Double-E Company (Eva and Elsa) have teamed with Astek to create several designs of Jim Flora wall coverings. Above is an example (piano not included). Here's another. And another. And here's the entire collection. Our books and website are attempting to spread Flora across the planet. You can do your part by spreading it across your home.

Enchanted Lion has reprinted two early Flora children's books, The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957) and Kangaroo for Christmas (1962). English is our favorite language, but editions of these books have now been reprinted in Italian, French, and Spanish.

Artifact Puzzles has produced a 302-piece wooden jigsaw puzzle of Flora's mid-1960s painting Big Bank Robbery (above). It comes packaged in a pine wood box, which (when you complete the puzzle) can be re-purposed as a parakeet coffin.

And finally, next year marks the Flora (born January 25, 1914) centennial. We're exploring several exhibition locales, with a strong possibility at Silvermine Arts Center in the historic Silvermine district of Norwalk CT. Flora and his wife Jane were members of the Silvermine Arts Guild, so it would mark a homecoming of sorts for the artist's works. Details forthcoming.

That's TMI Part 1. We'll post more updates in a day or two.

a little Flora brightens a room

To many who know him, our friend Takashi Okada of Tokyo is a talented graphic designer, music producer, historian, cultural connoisseur, cat lover, and gentleman. But unless you visit Takashi and his wife Tomoko's home, you might not know he has a deep Flora fixation. Takashi owns original art, album covers, Little Man Press artifacts, children's books, and fine art prints. We've long known about Takashi's love of Flora, but never having visited the Far East, we hadn't seen the shrine. The above photo was sent by our Japanese friend.

G3 in Tampico: the restoration

We launched our latest Jim Flora fine art print, G3 in Tampico (detail, left), earlier this week. The original 1970 tempera painting on artist board is shelved in storage at the Flora collection in Norwalk, Connecticut. The title is an enigma, but so are the figures (full work below). Here's a peek at the selection and restoration process behind our fine art prints.

The Flora catalog is huge; as co-archivists, Barb Economon and I have a growing list of works flagged for print production. G3 was not on this list. Most original works on paper have been scanned at high resolution, and oversized canvases have been photographed. The digital files then undergo a carpal-straining restoration process to prepare the images for print media (e.g., books, paper goods, fine art prints). This process is the purview of Barb, a specialist in digital image technology. It's become obvious during our research in the collection that Flora was less than fastidious in the preservation of his past art during his lifetime. It's likely that the large volume of historical works balanced against the ongoing creation of new works left little time for the artist to focus on safeguarding his legacy. Sunlight, humidity, careless shelving, aging, and accidents, as well as adhesive stains, paper acidity, and nicotine smoke have all taken their toll. After Flora's death, his family placed the entire collection in safe, climate-controlled storage (photo, lower left), where most of it remains to this day. The greater the deterioration of (or damage to) the original, the more restoration work is required.

A few weeks ago a small record label requested an image to license for a CD cover. Reviewing hundreds of digital files, I discovered G3 (previously unpublished and uncirculated) and sent the label a low-resolution jpg (along with a batch of additional images). On closer examination, I realized the image had not been restored. Strictly as a Zen exercise, I undertook some rudimentary cleanup over several days, and the figures began to percolate. I reached the limits of my restorative powers and turned the file over to Barb. She made additional corrections and adjustments, and decided to produce a test print. It was declared a masterwork, and we decided to issue an edition. The entire process from idle cleanup to print launch took four days.

Below is a before/after comparison of the images (click to enlarge). The original is in bad shape — there are faded areas, soiling, paint loss, and moisture spots. It's amazing what you can accomplish with painstaking mouse-clicks.

I considered purchasing G3 from the Flora family. However, considering the condition of the original, I opted for a print. The damaged work would be expensive to restore, and without professional restoration it will continue to deteriorate. (Its condition is effectively stabilized in limited light, climate-controlled storage.) The new print reflects the work much as Flora created it forty years ago, with a few minor aging artifacts.

Archiving, May 2006

photo by Don Brockway, May 15, 2006, Norwalk CT

The Kerlan Collection

Farm scene draft for The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957), Flora's second children's book. The landscape image is one of 80 scans Barbara and I recently acquired from the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota. We plan to reproduce a number of these early work pages in our third book of Floriana, currently being compiled and written.

Among the artifacts — donated to the University by the artist — was an eye-popping version of Flora's first children's book, The Fabulous Firework Family (1955). At first glance, we thought it was a badly preserved first edition because the pages were detached and stuffed between covers. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that Flora had reconstructed the book by sequencing his original drafts of each page, which were rendered on various types of paper in pencil, pen and watercolor. He then trimmed text sections from a printed edition and glued them in position on each page.

The one-of-a-kind copy was inscribed with affection to Dr. Kerlan.

Mischief and Sinister Curiosity

My article about Flora which appeared in the August 2007 issue of Juxtapoz is now posted at JimFlora.com. Two footnotes:
1) Typos and lamentable editorial "improvements" in the print version have been emended;
2) Since the Flora works which illustrated the print version are already prominently displayed elsewhere on the site, I substituted new (and in some cases previously uncirculated) images.