Robert Lowry @ 90

Robert Lowry (1919-1994) would turn 90 today. Don't expect a presidential proclamation in commemoration of this troubled man's legacy. However, we salute the Little Man Press writer/editor for changing the course of Flora's career, and probably for influencing his art. It all began one day in 1938 when the volatile literary turbine accosted Flora on the Art Academy of Cincinnati campus and demanded the undergrad illustrator serve as art director for his fledgling independent press publication.

"I was intrigued by his verve and the wild look in his eyes," recalled Flora in a 1987 autobiographical essay. "Lowry at the time was only seventeen or eighteen but he had been a child prodigy and was enormously talented. We found an immediate rapport, and I slipped into the harness and became co-founder of the Little Man Press."

GUP: Three Adventures, written by Robert Lowry, cover by Flora, 1942

"Lowry had no money and I had only a string of zeros," Flora explained, "so we decided to sell subscriptions to our nonexistent magazine. We tackled and browbeat everyone we knew on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. It was backbreaking work but we eventually squeezed $300 out of our subscribers and bought a press."

Subscription form, 1939 (collection of Ginnie Hofmann)

"We reasoned that the average little man during the depression might not be able to afford a big expensive magazine, so we published each article or story as a separate booklet and supplied a box so that our little man could assemble his own magazine. The box idea was a brainstorm about two centuries ahead of its time and was soon abandoned in order to avoid bankruptcy."

Box cover, Little Man Press editions, 1939 (collection of Ginnie Hofmann)

"We had only enough type to set two pages at a time. It was thus necessary to learn to calculate space very accurately. We were forced to set and print the first and last pages of our booklets, then break up the type and set the second and the next to last page and so on, until we met in the middle. If we undercalculated I made an illustration to fill the blank space. We didn't dare overcalculate and never did."

Two-page spread, Murderpie, 1939

"Bob was full of juice, a constant eruption, like a volcano," Flora told Lowry biographer Billie Jeyes. "He was constantly testing me, always pushing me to the limits. One day I was at the art academy, and Bob came to see me because he wanted me to do something. I was very busy at the time, and he kept pushing. So I hit him, in the chest. From then on we were on an even keel."

The 6.98 Jacket

Flora woodengraving for short story "The 6.98 Jacket" by Robert Lowry, appearing in Hutton Street, published by Little Man Press, Cincinnati, 1940. Print run unknown, but all LMP chapbooks were extremely limited editions between 125 and 400.

The booklet contains 18 meticulous woodcuts by Flora, none of which are known to have survived. If they were left in the custody of Lowry, he likely sold them or used them for kindling. The man was volatile. The Flora archive contains three rare late-1930s Flora lithographs bearing an artless overlay of Little Man promotional copy typed in red Courier. According to Flora's handwritten testimony, "Bob Lowry kept them and defaced them in one of his mad moods."

Some copies of Hutton Street were signed:

One of Lowry's sons told a journalist that neither he nor his brother had any original Flora works, pointing out, "Either my dad sold or gave away all his Flora artwork in the 1970s, or it was left behind in the house on Hutton Street when my grandmother sold it in the '80s and was thrown away by the people who bought it. Or it could have been in my aunt's apartment and destroyed in the fire that killed her in 2004." Our journalist friend cited Lowry's 1970s book-length manuscript Letters To My Psychiatrist, described as "a mishmash of playlets, meditations, and journal." In it, Lowry "refers to holding a garage sale in 1975 or so where he was trying to sell art that Flora and Hugo Valerio did for Little Man Press—with, apparently, no takers. Indiana University's Lilly Library has a letter from Bob to a book collector in the '70s in which he offers a Flora watercolor for sale."

Murderpie

Flora woodcut print reproduced in Murderpie, a chapbook written by Robert Lowry, published by their struggling Little Man Press, Cincinnati, 1939. Many Little Man publications featured bizarre, meticulous cuts by Flora, but none of the original blocks are known to exist. This is one of the few extant signed LMP-era prints.

From Lowry's text:

I WILL HAVE TO BAM THEM NOW, he said.

He began to push them down with his two hands. He pushed them all down to the floor. He pushed them down with his two hands. Some little squashy ones he shook. He shook big greasy ones with moonbeam smiles. His little knife was gone because no one was left to care whether anyone was alive or anything. The whole room was packed full of bones and shanks and broken wishbones. And some of the blood and gore was trying to get away out of the door. He closed up everything.

Little Man Press logo (evolution)

Above: rejected attempt at a Little Man Press logo, ca. 1939-1940, discovered in early sketchbook. The experiments continued:

Eventually Flora and his LMP partner Robert Lowry settled on this design:

predator train

early 1940s pencil sketch adapted for
Robert Lowry short story "The Monkey Cane,"
appearing in Gup (Little Man Press, 1942)

Little Man Press, Summer 1939

Another rare (and previously unseen) print acquired from a recent estate sale in Cincinnati. As with all prints from Flora's productive post-Art Academy period, the original block cannot be located (possibly having been destroyed or discarded by Flora's LMP partner Robert Lowry). The above water-damaged print is unsigned, untitled, and unnumbered. No documentation exists regarding the work's purpose (e.g., publicity, ad, edition print, chapbook page). The faded vertical center section (and lack of signature) implies this print could have been an early strike, when the block had not been thoroughly inked.

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."

It lives, it walks, it seeks revenge!

Rasputin-strength, dismembered and trepanated zombie. Spot illo (woodcut, one of many), Murderpie, Little Man Press, 1939. Publication written by Robert Lowry. Whereabouts of original woodcuts unknown.

Fresh ink and Flora tattoo #2

Some people dedicate their bodies to science. Shannon Wade, of Portland OR, dedicates hers to the art of Jim Flora. Not the first time, either.

The above distended figure originally appeared on the title page of GUP, a 1942 Little Man Press publication written by Robert Lowry and illustrated by Flora.

coffin sketch

Untitled, undated pencil drawing on onionskin paper; later printed in Gup, a 1942 chapbook authored by Robert Lowry, issued by Little Man Press (Cincinnati), featuring cover and interior illustrations by Flora.

March Morning

Woodcut print accompanying Robert Lowry's short story, "March Morning," page 36, Hutton Street (Little Man Press, 1940). This 7-1/2" x 5" chapbook contains 18 meticulous woodengravings by Flora. Whereabouts of the original blocks is (ahem!) unknown.

Jim Flora Meets Raymond Scott

In a design sense—and posthumously, anyway. Their professional paths nearly crossed: early in his career, composer-bandleader Raymond Scott recorded for Columbia Records but left the label in 1941, one year before Flora was hired by Columbia's art department.

I've long wanted to revive the Flora album cover tradition by adapting his art on new CDs. In 2006, Seattle's Reptet released Do This!, whose cover was bedecked with a Flora three-eyed monster we call a "triclops." Later this year, the first CD collection of the 1948-49 Raymond Scott Quintet will showcase a Flora cover (above) designed by the gifted Dutch art director Piet Schreuders. The 1951 illustration, which originally garnished a Robert Lowry short story in Mademoiselle magazine, was likely rendered during Flora's Mexican idyll. Ectoplasm refers to a Scott composition on the CD, which this author is producing for Basta Audio-Visuals.

N.B.: The Lothars album Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas (released in 2000) adapted Flora's 1955 album cover art for This Is Benny Goodman and His Orchestra (RCA Victor).

P.S. Basta is considering pressing a limited vinyl edition of Ectoplasm for the Floraphiles.

sitting man

Woodcut print, ca. 1938-1940, rendered when Flora lived in Cincinnati and was working with Robert Lowry producing Little Man Press publications. Title, edition run, and location of original block unknown. The print was discovered in the estate of a Cincinnati collector who passed away at age 93 several months ago. The collection included about a dozen vintage Flora prints, most previously unseen by us. We'll publish others soon.

Little Man Press exhibit at Walker Art Center

The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has mounted the first-ever exhibit of Little Man Press memorabilia in their Library display case. Although not viewable by the public without appointment, the collection features rare chapbooks with Flora woodcuts, a narrative chronicle, original pencil sketches, and vintage Little Man ephemera. (Click to enlarge the above panorama.)

Designed by Flora archivist Barbara Economon with the assistance of WAC Librarian Rosemary Furtak, the exhibition deserves a wider audience. Interested arts venues should drop us a line.

Little Man Press co-founder and author Robert Lowry, ca. 1955

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.

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.