Baltimore

Baltimore, tempera on heavy stock, early 1960s

Self-Portrait with Cigar

Pen & ink on heavy stock, 1990s, from the archives.
Previously unpublished and uncirculated work.

Salt Pond - Block Island

Salt Pond - Block Island, tempera and pencil on paper, 1963. This previously uncirculated work was first published in our 2009 anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora (the only one of our three Flora compendiums currently in print). The work reflects Flora's love of rustic maritime locales and things that float.

Block Island, Rhode Island is located off the southern coast of the state. Wiki contains the following about the saline pond:

Great Salt Pond Archeological District is a historic spot in New Shoreham, Rhode Island. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. The Great Salt Pond is a round and almost entirely enclosed body of water separating the north and south regions of Block Island. The pond has a small channel on its northwest shore connecting it with Block Island Sound. The opening is artificial and was dug out in 1895 to make a harbor in the south part of the pond.

Mambo for Cake

Someone who co-admins this blog recently had a birthday and his girlfriend concocted the above cake (based, of course, on this.) The (edible) elements were commissioned from a designer on Etsy and meticulously assembled by wondergal Beth Sorrentino on a chocolate cake she baked. The cake was presented to the surprised Flora archivist at Café Frida in New York. After dozens of cameras (including that of Otis Fodder, above) documented the delicacy, it was summarily disassembled with knives and forks.

Beth confides: although the original RCA Victor album was a 12" LP, the cake replicates the rare (in fact, never seen) 10" version.

Rowayton Creature Tableau (new print)

Our latest Jim Flora limited edition fine art print launches today. We've dubbed the untitled, undated black and white work Rowayton Creature Tableau because of the strange figures populating the streets of this seaside Connecticut village (the artist's adopted hometown). The previously uncirculated and unpublished pen & ink with watercolor drawing was discovered in the artist's collection. We've analyzed the technique and determined that it reflects the 1970s style of caricature commonly found in Flora's children's books of that decade.

Flora lived in Rowayton from the mid-1940s to his death in 1998. Over the years he rendered scenes from the town dozens of times (see our recently released Bell Island at Night print) in a variety of media. The creature tableau is one of his more playful portraits of the town.

Rowayton Creature Tableau has been issued in a numbered, limited edition of 25 prints at a price of $150 (+s/h) each. Prices will increase as the edition sells down.

Leonardo, Lorenzo and Verrocchio

Pen & ink, 1992, discovered in sketchpad. Like most Flora works of the 1990s, this cityscape has never been published or publicly viewed.

Meeting of the Clan (part 1)

Detail of large-scale illustration for "A Meeting of the Clan at a State Park," article in New York Times, October 14, 1956. This detail, reproduced (with the full illustration) in our second anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, is from a rejected version of the assignment found in the Flora family archives. The published version has similar elements, but repositioned.

The Duke and Harry Carney

Previously uncirculated pen and ink from sketchbook, 1995.

From the 1920s to his death in 1974, Duke Ellington saw musicians come and go. Saxophonist/clarinetist Harry Carney (b. Boston, 1910) devoted 46 years to performing and recording with the maestro. The trusty sideman occasionally conducted the orchestra in Duke's absence.

After Ellington's death, Carney was quoted as saying, "This is the worst day of my life. Without Duke I have nothing to live for." Four months later, Carney passed away.

Flora was an admitted "jazz hound." He sketched, drew, painted and illustrated jazz musicians and scenes sporadically throughout his career, often as commercial assignments. However, in the final decade of his life, the retired artist devoted a considerable amount of creative energy drawing and painting portraits of musicians he admired from the 1920s through the 1960s. Scores—perhaps hundreds—of such works are in the Flora archives; most have never been publicly viewed.

We're in the preliminary stages of a Flora jazz exhibition for 2012. Details as plans develop.

Charlie's Egg

Tempera on heavy stock (actually, painted on the reverse of an oversized 1943 Columbia Records convention program; clean paper was rationed and scarce during World War II). The previously uncirculated and largely unseen work was first published in our third anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. We issued a limited edition fine art print of the work in 2009.

The identity of Charlie remains unknown.

Brain Map and Abstract Tangle (new fine art prints)

Artmuse.com recently issued two new—and low-cost—Jim Flora limited edition fine art prints. The above, based on a 1964 untitled and previously uncirculated work discovered in the Flora collection, has been casually tagged Brain Map to differentiate it from countless other works left unnamed by the artist. The work was first published in our 2007 Fantagraphics anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

The print can be purchased in several different sizes at various price tiers, from $25 (14" x13", edition of 200) to $1,000 (40"x38", edition of 20). These works were licensed exclusively to Artmuse.com, and are only available thru their website.

Brain Map is partnered in the Artmuse.com catalog with a second untitled 1960s Flora work, provisionally christened Abstract Tangle #2:

This work has never been published and is previously uncirculated, having been discovered—page intact—in an artist's sketchpad from the mid-1960s.

Charlie Yup's cast of characters

Hand-drawn two-page spread of figure studies for Flora's third book for young readers, Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys (1959). The pages, which do not appear in the published edition, were scanned from the Dr. Irvin C. Kerlan children's literature collection at the U of Minnesota.

On the mock title page at right, the author refers to the book as "An Old Fashioned Scissor and Paper Adventure." Although the characters above were drawn in pencil and painted in tempera, a few draft pages (later donated by Flora to Dr. Kerlan), including an early version of the title page, feature hand-cut figures glued to the paper.

The explanatory note atop the left page was intended for Margaret McElderry, the legendary children's book editor who in the mid-1950s encouraged Flora to embark on a secondary career that yielded 17 titles (all edited by McElderry) in 27 years. Charlie Yup is the hardest-to-find of the vintage Flora books, rarely turning up at auction or in the listings of antiquarian booksellers.

McElderry passed away in February at the age of 98.

Bell Island at Night (new print)

JimFlora.com has released a new fine art print. The panoramic Bell Island at Night was adapted from a 1968 tempera in which Flora provided a surreal nocturnal impression of his neighbors and neighborhood. Bell Island is part of Rowayton CT, and the Flora family lived on the island at 7 St. James from the late 1940s to Flora's death in 1998.

The archival-quality fine art print has been released in an edition of 30 at a launch price of $160. As with all our Flora fine art prints, prices increase as the edition sells down. The image area is 10-1/2" high x 17-1/2" wide and centered on an untrimmed 13" x 19" sheet.

Arts and the Man (part 1)

Detail from panoramic illustration for article "Arts and the Man," Park East magazine, May 1953. Flora served as the publication's art director in 1952, but moved on to full-time freelancing in January 1953. His successor in the Park East AD chair was his longtime colleague Robert M. Jones, who had also succeeded Flora as AD at Columbia Records in 1945. Jones jobbed out several Park East illustration assignments to Flora. The following year, Jones was named AD at RCA Victor Records, for whom he commissioned Flora to create some of the label's most iconic LP covers of the mid-decade.

The Patented Gate & the Mean Hamburger

Spot illustration for "The Patented Gate and the Mean Hamburger," a short story by Robert Penn Warren which appeared in the January 1947 issue of Mademoiselle magazine. At the time Flora was employed at Columbia Records, but having been promoted out of the art department and focusing largely on bureaucratic tasks (much to his displeasure), he was seeking outside freelance work. His first assignment for Mademoiselle, for Robert Lowry's "Little Baseball World," had appeared in the September 1946 issue. All illustrative elements from "The Patented Gate" (and "Little Baseball World") were reproduced in our second anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

What Is Automation? (part 1)

Partial illustration, "What is Automation," Collier's magazine, March 16, 1956. Pull quote from the layout:

Automation has been heralded by some as the threshold to a new Utopia, in which robots do all the work while human drones recline in pneumatic bliss.

The complete two-tiered illustration—half-utopian (above), half-apocalyptic—was reproduced in our second anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

music amid the ruins

Spot illustration, April 1946 Columbia Records Disc Digest, a monthly "commentary on the new Columbia Masterworks and popular records plus interesting features on the artists who make them." DD was the successor to Flora's popular monthly Coda, which he created for the label in 1943. Coda was seemingly "retired" when Flora was promoted from Art Director to Advertising Manager in 1945. He illustrated all issues of Coda, but very few DDs. Here's Flora's cover for the April '46 issue:

Many (but not all) of Flora's covers and spot illustrations for Coda and DD showcase a more sober side of the artist. These publications focused primarily on classical ("serious") music. Besides his well-known penchant for hot jazz—as evidenced in his wild album artwork for Columbia—Flora was a devotee of classical music and many of his Coda illustrations reflect the dignity of the genre.

A New Turn in Taxes

The above tempera on illustration board by Flora was recently purchased by a fabulous financial blogger. The Rube Goldberg-like catalytic pipeline originally appeared in the December 1964 issue of Fortune magazine accompanying an article entitled "A New Turn in Taxes."

Most of Flora's work-for-hire illustrations from the 1940s and 1950s cannot be located, having been kept (or disposed of) by client art directors. Judging by what's in the Flora family collection, starting in the late 1950s the artist began retrieving his creations after publication. Hundreds of commercial illustrations—some elaborate like "Taxes," others simple black and white spot illos—remain in storage. There's no way of knowing how many commercial illustrations Flora provided during his career—surely thousands, because that's primarily how he earned his livelihood. Despite his considerable legacy of fine art, it was topical deadline assignments that paid the mortgage and supported the family.

Bell Island at Night

We return from a fine art print hiatus with our first new work of 2011: Bell Island at Night, a 1968 tempera in which Flora provides a surreal nocturnal impression of his neighbors. Bell Island is part of Rowayton (which in turn is part of Norwalk, CT), and the Flora family lived on the island at 7 St. James from the late 1940s to Flora's death in 1998. Our newest fine art print will be launched in an edition of 30 in the next week or two. We'll re-post this info upon launch. The print is currently in the final proofing stages.

Keystone Crowd

Keystone Crowd, a 1968 tempera on thick stock that hasn't yet made it into one of our Flora anthologies. Unpublished, uncirculated, previously unseen work currently sitting in storage. Pennsylvania is the Keystone State, but the artist's title reference remains a mystery.

artist at rest

Today in 1914, James Royer Flora was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio. Above our guy is pictured relaxing at home in the late 1980s. Interesting juxtaposition of bold patterns, with hunting jacket, slacks and chair vying for focal primacy. Cameo in the upper right by the Fab Four, depicted in 1964, tho it appears to be a hand-rendered (probably not by Flora) replica of a famous photo.

Flora's daughter Julia provides some family context:

I love this picture; this is exactly the way I'll always remember him, with that great head of hair and his flair (?) for mixing plaids (we used to tease him about that all the time). I'm fairly sure it was my brother Robert that took it and probably for some kind of promo shot Dad asked him to create.

In the early 1970s, Flora rendered an autobiographical montage, The First Five Years, in acrylic on wood. The work featured six stacked tiers depicting incidents during the artist's childhood. We posted one tier in December 2008. Here's another: