Flora takes Seattle

The cover of the Weekly, anyway (print edition, September 19-25 issue), in conjunction with the just-opened exhibition at Fantagraphics Bookstore/Gallery.

The illustration is a detail from Flora's 1954 RCA Victor LP cover Shorty Rogers Courts the Count. The Weekly's Fall Arts section includes this nifty Flora cavalcade and a dozen interior spot placements:

JimFlora.com finally updated!

Long overdue. Sorry. Not that anyone was expecting apologies. Please visit.

Lots of new content: 63rd Street fine art print page; Fantagraphics Gallery exhibit poster; more LP covers that are commonly mistaken for Flora designs; and a progress report on the Primer for Prophets series. The Railroad Town page has been updated. We also corrected typos, fixed broken links, and rearranged the furniture. You almost wouldn't recognize the place, except that it's still populated with strange Flora characters.

In fact, those strange Florabeasts seem to be EVERYWHERE lately!

Sept 22 "master piece"

Pencil sketch, ca. 1988-1991. Purpose unknown, but presumably an invitation to some festiveness at the Flora home. Coincidentally, the above date marks the opening reception for our Jim Flora exhibit at the Fantagraphics Bookstore/Gallery. If you're in Seattle on that date, you're invited! Exhibit runs thru October 24 and features original paintings, fine art prints, woodcut relief prints, record covers, music ephemera, and Little Man Press artifacts.

1948 Flora

"My days were peaceful and sheltered, my time generously idled away on pleasantries of no consequence—until Flora entered my life."

vintage Flora print now on eBay

Jim Flora Art LLC has listed on eBay a vintage hand-colored relief print of a 1954 Flora woodcut entitled Manhattan. The print was color-filled (with either tempera or watercolor), signed, titled, and matted by the artist.

The cityscape depicts many NYC landmarks, such as the Empire State Building, St. Patrick's Cathedral, the UN, Madison Square Garden, the Statue of Liberty, famous theaters and legendary musical bistros, Washington Square arch, a NY public library lion, subways, taxis, horse-drawn carriages and tourists.

An unknown number of Manhattan prints were gift-wrapped by the artist for gallery sale back in the 1950s. The print being auctioned remains sealed by tape. Several Manhattan prints are in the family collection, but this is the only one which will be auctioned, and there are no immediate plans to sell the remaining prints.

Update 1: Auction drew 24 bids, closed at $1,610.00.

Update 2: Message received. Due to popular demand, we will be issuing a limited edition giclée of this work. People feel nostalgic about New York in the 1950s. Who knew?

Update 3: Like magic: done.

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.

Quartet San Francisco

To sustain the classic Flora LP tradition of the 1940s and '50s, I've long advocated restoring his art to record album covers. Aside from one or two knockoffs of existing Flora designs, the first new release to adapt Flora non-LP art was Do This! by Seattle's Reptet, in 2006. The cover for the forthcoming Raymond Scott Quintet CD Ectoplasm (scheduled for February 2008 US release) was completed last May. Now comes the Quartet San Francisco's Whirled Chamber Music, whose cover designed is adapted from a mid-1960s uncirculated Flora painting entitled Barberinni.

Not coincidentally {ahem!}, the QSF album contains seven Raymond Scott compositions (including "Powerhouse"), seeded amid an eclectic mix of Ellington, AWB, Bernstein, Corea, Tower of Power, and one original. As quartet leader Jeremy Cohen asserts, "The tradition of chamber music has taught us to play from our hearts with the highest standards. So when the music says swing, we swing. When the music says groove, we groove." Hear them swing and groove here.

Over the next few months, the QSF will perform in Los Angeles, Columbus, Pasadena, Louisville, NJ, NYC, Berkeley, Natick, and elsewhere.

Update (September 27): "Scientists working diligently in a laboratory somewhere recently discovered a DNA strand and have identified it as the Cartoon Gene."

odd couple

Untitled pen & ink sketch, ca. 1940. I detect the influence of Daniel Johnston. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Never mind.

Flora exhibit in Seattle

Barbara and I will be curating the first Jim Flora art exhibit since—well, since the artist's memorial service in 1998. The exhibit, named after our second book, "The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora," takes place at the Fantagraphics Bookstore/Gallery. The exhibit will run from September 22 through October 24.

The Florafest will include original paintings, fine art prints, woodcut relief prints, record covers, music ephemera, and Little Man Press artifacts. There will also be stuff you can buy that has Flora mischief all over it.

Barbara and I will be on hand for an opening reception on September 22. More details forthcoming as arrangements are finalized.

laughing cow

Or perhaps she's just contented. Early pencil sketch, ca. 1940. There are a number of pencil and pen sketches in the archives which evolved through stages into paintings. This, so far as we know, isn't one.

The artist who "couldn't stand a static space"

untitled, undated pen and ink, ca. 1940

Advanced Pictionary

D.B. Dowd (Professor of Visual Communication, Washington University, St.Louis) opines:

The modernist drive to split representation from its subject (that is, to open up a space between them, at the very least) included the ransacking of pre-modern art historical conventions, often to excellent effect. Jim Flora’s 1945 Coda cover draws on spot color printing and the use of spatial registers, a la Egyptian art, to deliver a strong graphic narrative with clarity and visual independence from, but knowledge of, its subjects.

63rd Street fine art print now on eBay

A new limited edition, archival-quality, large-scale fine art print of Jim Flora's late-1950s tempera 63rd Street is now on eBay for a 10-day auction. An edition of ten has been produced by Flora historian/archivist Barbara Economon. The print now listed (10/10) is the only copy from the edition that will be auctioned in 2007, and the sale price of remaining prints will be higher than the winning bid. If you've got questions about the edition, drop us a line.

UPDATE (13 FEB 08): We have one print remaining from this edition.

Flora in Juxtapoz

The August issue of Juxtapoz magazine includes a feature article on Jim Flora, written by someone named Irwin Chusid (who denies responsibility for the article's poorly constructed sentences, mangled syntax, bad grammar, and blown punchlines; to quote Erich von Stroheim, it was edited by "someone who had nothing on his mind but his hat").

Regardless of the feature's narrative flaws, the Flora works reproduced therein are magnificent, and include the late 1940s painting The Rape of the Stationmaster's Daughter, the 1951 woodcut Railroad Town, the 1951 tempera 63rd Street, and several commercial illustrations. Bonus: the article reveals in sordid detail the Flora-Elvis connection!

Update (Jan 08): We posted the unedited text (sans typos) at JimFlora.com.

woodland critters

Bottom half of two-tiered tempera found in sketchbook (ca. 1963-65). One of countless Flora works without a title.

Railroad Town on the Fantagraphics flog

Fantagraphics Books Art Director Jacob McCovey writes:

Flora is jaw-dropping to the point of being a spokesman for TMD, not to mention Bipolar Disorder. The entire tsunami of illustrators/designers making a new-wave career producing rock posters should be paying alms to the descendants of the man who made album design such an emotional experience.

liquor demon

Detail, untitled pen and ink depicting an artist suffering

from alcoholic delusions, ca. 1993-94, from sketchbook

Railroad Town release party!

We've compiled a Railroad Town info page at JimFlora.com, commemorating the print's official "launch." If you're curious to learn more about this 1951 Flora masterwork (detail at right) which can now be purchased as a numbered, limited edition relief print, visit Railroad Town Central.

Besides the new edition of 50, there are a small number of proofs available in varying ink colors and papers (info on the RRT page).

The current block of five released prints (#41-45) is priced at $700 each.

UPDATE (July 20): The #41-45 block is sold out. We are now releasing #26-30 at $750 each.

UPDATE (July 21): One print sold of #26-30 block; four remain.

P.S. If you're in Hoboken, stop by Right Angle Framing at 320 Washington Street (bet. 3rd and 4th). A Railroad Town proof, elegantly framed by the shop's Pablo Godoy, is on exhibit in their window. And it's for sale — ask Pablo.

Railroad Town (edition)

Production is complete:

Flora carved Railroad Town in 1951 while living in Taxco. The trial proof relief print above was produced in December 2006. The June 2007 numbered edition (of 50), just completed at Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress in Knoxville, is even better (alas, no photo yet). Most of the "saltiness" (white flecking) visible above in the peripheries has been eliminated by printmaker Bryan Baker. The impression is solid—and stunning.

The longer I stare at the details of this woodcut (click on image to enlarge), the more I'm convinced this is one of Flora's definitive masterpieces. Every quirk and every nuance is evident: music, architecture, dogs, and trains; wild contours and interlocking figures; degenerate behavior, multi-tiered cutaways, and unfathomable anatomy. It's a graphic traffic jam. As Flora once confessed, "I could never stand a static space."

The edition, struck from the original artist's block, features black ink on 280g archival-quality Rives BFK cream. The block measures 11" x 22-1/4", and the full print (with border, not shown above) measures 18-3/4" x 30". Each print is hand-titled and numbered, and authenticated in letterpress type (also not shown above).

We are releasing five unframed prints (#46-50) from the edition at $600 each (plus s/h; PayPal accepted). After those are sold, we will release a second block of five at $700 each. For subsequent releases, prices will increase as stock is depleted. We hope to offer these prints for sale officially by late July. If you want to get a jump on the market, email us. No one reads blogs anymore. If you've gotten this far, you're an insider.

UPDATE (14 JUL 07): First block of five quickly sold out. We have released prints #41-45 at $700 each.

Mambo print hits milestone

Jim Flora Art LLC recently sold #100 of the Mambo For Cats limited edition screen print. As originally announced, the first 100 prints (of 200 produced) were sold for $150/ea., with the caveat that prices would be increased as stock was depleted.

JFA is now releasing a block of 25 more prints at $175/ea. The 1955 illustration originally appeared on a 12" x 12" RCA Victor LP cover, but the print measures an outsized 20" x 20". The edition was produced using three acrylic screen printing inks meticulously matched to Flora's original colors on archival 100-pound off-white cover stock. All prints are numbered and authenticated.

If your budget is limited but you'd still like a Jim Flora LP cover in a 20" x 20" archival screen edition, the Pete Jolly Duo print (also featuring a 1955 RCA Victor illo) sells for $125. (Price applies to #2-51 of the print run of 125, after which—well, you know the drill).