Jazz Quintet

This untitled 1943 Flora tempera, casually referred to as "Jazz Quintet," was our second limited edition fine art print, issued in early 2008. At the time, we were uncertain about the market potential of Flora works in archival-quality inkjet format, so we opted for a short-run edition of ten. We recently sold the sixth print, and the price for remaining prints has consequently increased (reflecting depleted supply).

This is an iconic early Flora work, and though we prefer to offer Flora prints at "affordable" rates, we quickly came to regret limiting the edition to ten. Scarcity drives up prices, but it's a decision we (and the market) have to live with. When this edition sells out, it will not be reissued in large display format, only in reduced portfolio size (and even that's a mere "maybe"). Our first print, 63rd Street, was also issued in an edition of ten, and only one print remains. All subsequent fine art prints (except silk screens and woodcuts) have been issued in editions between twenty and thirty.

The original Jazz Quintet art is owned by a Floraphile in Canada.

ship in silhouette

This ship is part of a large untitled tempera harbor montage painted by Flora on a slab of masonite around 1951. How "large"? How much of a "part"? After isolating the above detail, I copied and pasted it horizontally and vertically over the full original to figure out how many elements this size could fit in the complete image field. Outcome: the above detail represents 1/52nd of the entire work.

no fight in this dog

Postman bites dog! Or at least appears to be attempting to turn the tables. Tempera draft from The Day The Cow Sneezed, courtesy the Dr. Irvin Kerlan children's literature collection. Although the book was published in 1957, archival correspondence between Flora and his Harcourt editor Margaret McElderry indicates the book was being developed as early as 1955, the same year Flora's first children's book, The Fabulous Firework Family, was published.

Louis Armstrong's Hot 5 print

Now available: a limited edition (25) fine art print of Flora's 1947 Columbia album cover for Louis Armstrong's Hot 5. This print was commissioned from Jim Flora Art by Hypergallery, a UK dealer who specializes in reproductions of classic album cover art, and is available exclusively through their website.

The print was produced by Flora archivist Barbara Economon from a vintage printer's proof sheet in the Flora collection. Each print in the edition was hand-signed by Joel Flora, the son of the late artist, for added provenance. Besides being a fine artist in his own right, Joel was born in 1947, the same year his father produced the Armstrong illustration.

The work will not be reissued as a print in any other format in the future.

Standing on the Corner

There are five figures in this undated (late 1960s-early 1970s) Flora tempera, owned by Eric Kohler (who purchased it from the artist in the early 1990s). Two are extracted above. They—and their three unseen compatriots—will not be featured in our forthcoming third Flora anthology.

There's plenty of great unpublished images for volume four (target publication date 2012). Sorry if we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Clara Gee Stamaty @ 90

We don't generally post the work of other artists on the Flora blog, but we're delighted to make an exception with Clara Gee Stamaty. Clara met Flora when they attended the Art Academy of Cincinnati in the early 1940s. Her late husband, syndicated cartoonist Stanley Stamaty (d. 1979), was one of Flora's best buddies at school, and the couple remained lifelong friends with Flora. (Clara remarried in 1984.)

To celebrate becoming a nonagenarian, Clara has a retrospective art opening at the Ruth Hyman Jewish Community Center, in Deal NJ, on May 17 (two days after her birthday). The exhibit runs through June 30. In addition to oils, gouaches, collages, and mixed media, the exhibit will include a number of the artist's painted rocks (pictured above).

Although it won't be in the exhibit, here's a pencil sketch of Flora by Clara from their Academy days. (It was reproduced in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.)

You can download a postcard (as pdf) for the exhibit here.

Sherwood's forest

Tempera illustration from Sherwood Walks Home (1966), part of the James Flora Papers in the Kerlan children's literature collection at the University of Minnesota. A chapter in our forthcoming Flora book will be devoted to images from the collection (the above is not included) and a profile of Dr. Irvin Kerlan, patron saint of tot-lit. We've previously posted several drafts and sketches discovered in the Kerlan vaults.

The Rollicking Roller Skates

Dummy page, Columbia's Children's Album Sets, demo booklet, 1941, part of a series of homemade samples prepared by Flora for the Columbia Records art department. Flora was living in Cincinnati at the time, an Art Academy grad, newly married, barely making ends meet as a freelance commercial illustrator, and sidelining on Little Man Press projects with Robert Lowry. Within a year, Columbia art director Alex Steinweiss offered Flora a job. Within two years, Flora had replaced Steinweiss as AD.

The entire series of demo booklets was reproduced in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, along with other Cincinnati-era artifacts.

temp job filled

The services of this formerly out-of-work conductor (name: "Barlow") have been retained for our next book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, scheduled for August publication by Fantagraphics. Barlow has been hired as the volume's Gallery Guide. As such, he will stand sentinel-like at the beginning of each book section, with dotted lines emerging from his torso indicating chapter titles orbiting in close proximity. He earned the nod over six competing spot illustrations, who sulked away disappointed and simmering with resentment at the lucky Barlow.

In a former life, Barlow was a famous Columbia recording artist. He is seen above posing for a full-page ad in the June 1942 edition of Stadium Concerts Review, wearing the fashionable goalie mask for which he was renowned on the podium.

The Depot Fire

Detail, The Depot Fire, tempera on paper, 1963. This is about one-third of the entire work, which will be fully reproduced in our forthcoming book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. We reviewed printer's proofs of the pages this week, and the book is on schedule for publication by Fantagraphics in August or September.

The Errant Postulant

Two characters, five legs. This acrylic on canvas (15-3/4" x 20", late 1990s) almost made it into our forthcoming book, but was edged out by a plethora of prominent works. Flora produced some interesting, mystifying paintings in his final decade (after, by his own admission, "painting myself out of boats" in the late 1980s). Above is a low-grade snapshot corrected in Photoshop; the recently discovered work has not yet been professionally documented.

A postulant is someone who submits a request or applies for admission, especially into a religious order. Errant means straying, deviating from a proper course, or roving adventurously. Like, y'know, Julie Andrews.

UPDATE (10 May 09): The work was professionally photographed last week and is now slated for reproduction as a fine art print later this year.

Tokyo had Godzilla ...

Paris had this unnamed gargantuan invader. In the foreground, a Van Dyke-bearded, top-hatted anatomical spare part flees from impending carnage, his method of self-propulsion unknown.

Spot illustration, Columbia Coda, Nov-Dec. 1943, having something to do with composer Frederick Delius—but after reading the booklet's accompanying text, we're not certain what.

a bird in the hand

Detail, Inside Sauter-Finegan RCA Victor LP cover, 1954. I bought this record at a yard sale in 1974 just for the sleeve illustration, which graced my living room wall. Never got around to dropping the needle on the vinyl. But you can listen to (and watch) Bill (Finegan) and Eddie (Sauter) on YouTube.

hands, columns, keyboard

Spot illustration, table of contents page

Columbia Disc Digest, April 1946

Look Homeward, Angel (colophon)

One of over 40 pocket-sized tempera illustrations Flora rendered in the mid-1940s for an apparently never-published edition of Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel. Illustrations survive for all chapters save one (chapter 30), as well as for the title page, colophon (above), and the book's three sectional divides. No documentation exists in the archives explaining the destiny or disposition of the series. Several illustrations were published in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora; the rest remain in the vault.

Iz pussyfootin on ur Floraz, hiping new boook

Takashi Okada of Tokyo alerts us that volume 2 of his kitty-themed LP sleeve anthologies will be published imminently. The cover (above) features — well, it doesn't quite feature Flora's Mambo For Cats, but the artwork does play a "supporting role." The photographer is apparently distracting the cover model with a cheezburger.

The Rover Boys

The Rover Boys, tempera on board, ca. 1943. The work was presented as a wedding gift to Clara Gee Kastner and Stanley Stamaty, Flora's classmates and friends from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. (Clara and Stan are the parents of cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty.) No idea if the triple-headed figure was intended to portray the Rover lads of literary fame. The work was reproduced in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora

A pen and pencil sketch was later discovered in the Flora collection on a multi-panel sheet of unrelated drawings:

spotted kitteh

Pencil sketch, ca. 1940-42. A refined wood- or linocut of this critter appeared in the 1942 Little Man Press chapbook GUP, one of many Flora spot illustrations adorning the Robert Lowry story "The Hotel."

Vaya Laredo

Detail, Vaya Laredo, pen & ink, 1998. Full work to be reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, scheduled for Fall 2009 publication by Fantagraphics Books.

another from the skull gallery

Pencil sketch, early 1940s. Pulled-apart facial features linked by pin-lines is a common motif in early 1940s Flora sketches and paintings. Previous examples here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.