"Oldtown"

"Oldtown," pen and ink drawing, late 1930s, unpublished work. Oldtown (or Old Town?) is presumably a neighborhood in Cincinnati, where Flora lived at the time he rendered this drawing. We were unable to locate this community in a rudimentary search on our Google Machine. If any locals have the answer, please leave a comment below. 

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.

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:

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."

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!"