Steinweiss at 90

A Tribute to Alex Steinweiss, The Creator of the Album Cover, opens today at the Robert Berman Gallery in Santa Monica. In 1939, during the era of 78 rpm discs, Steinweiss revolutionized how record albums were sold by inventing the illustrated album jacket. At the time he worked for Columbia Records, a struggling label based in Bridgeport, CT. Previously albums were shelved in shops with only the spine lettering exposed. Steinweiss's vivacious color illustrations inspired record merchants to display the jackets face out, giving Columbia a retail edge over competing labels.

In 1942, while serving as Art Director for the label, Steinweiss hired an untested but promising young fine arts graduate from Cincinnati. Within a year, that talented pup—James Royer Flora—had succeeded Steinweiss as label AD.

Steinweiss, now 90, lives in Sarasota, and remains an active painter and designer.

The exhibit runs through Feb. 12.

Delaney and company

business card, Davis Delaney Printing (ca. 1950s)

pencil and tempera figures adapted
for above card (from sketchbook)

paddlewheeler

untitled tempera on paper, ca. 1960s

toothy canine

unfinished, untitled pen & ink drawing,

sketchbook entry, ca. early 1950s

crawly critter (related?)

abstract tangle

One of many—a recurring Flora motif. There's something jazz-like about these images, as if the artist were jamming on a canvas, creating rhythmic design. This untitled 10 x 8 tempera, discovered in a sketchbook, dates from the early to mid-1960s. There are dozens of sketchbooks in the collection, spanning the early 1940s to the month of Flora's death in July 1998. Aside from pen and pencil project drafts, the books contain numerous fully rendered (and often signed) paintings and drawings. It's possible that no one—including the artist's family—has previously beheld the vast majority of these works.

Quetzlcoatl Returns (1997)

Flora did some mind-bending works in the 1990s — more curiously sinister than his work in the 1980s (IMHO). Quetzlcoatl [sic] Returns is an acrylic on stretched canvas (15" x 30") rendered within a year of the artist's death. Flora, who lived in Mexico in 1950-1951, was a longtime enthusiast of Latin American folkways.

Skunkabater

Spot illustration, Research & Engineering, April 1956

untitled street scene

untitled pen and ink drawing, 1990s, possibly Mexico

Get toasted for 2008

Detail, untitled holiday painting, ca. 1951.

These stemware sophisticates also appear on a t-shirt

Sketch, ca. 1951, featuring a draft of the celebratory duo

a little something to wake the neighbors

Detail, March 1943 Columbia-Okeh Popular Records
monthly flyer; panel: Harry James

Merry Flora Christmas 2007

montage by IC using early 1950s Flora details

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Merry Saturnalia, Happy Festivus—whatever.

Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait, tempera on paper, ca. mid- to late-1940s.

Update OCT 2008: Now available as a limited edition fine art print.

enclosures

untitled modular tempera, ca. 1960s

macrocephalic bovine

Detail, March 1943 Columbia-Okeh Popular Records monthly flyer

panel: Okeh Country Dance, Folk Songs, and Blues

sketchbook, 1950s

Untitled sketches and figures from sketchbook, ca. early 1950s.

The hungry fellow on the bottom looks familiar:

extraterrestrial curiosity

Detail from untitled painting, ca. 1960s
Another detail appears here

science geek 3

Illustration, "The Challenge of Frontier Products Development"
Research and Engineering magazine, cover detail, July 1956

Bubbly Buddies and Bix & Tram t-shirts

Now on eBay: The "Bubbly Buddies" design (above, adapted from an early 1950s Christmas montage painted by Flora), and "Bix and Tram" (below, featuring caricatures from a 1947 Columbia Records album cover).

Flora goes Grammy?

Quartet San Francisco's 2007 CD, Whirled Chamber Music, has been nominated for a Grammy in the category Best Classical Crossover Album. This might be the first-ever album with a Flora cover to earn a Grammy nod.

Jim Flora ink

Since early 2006, Jim Flora Art has partnered with a hip Minneapolis screen printing shop called Aesthetic Apparatus. Dan Ibarra and Mike Byzewski of AA first produced a Mambo For Cats edition of 200, then a Pete Jolly Duo edition of 125. Both prints featured classic Flora 1955 RCA Victor LP covers. A month ago we launched the Primer for Prophets series.

JFA didn't just hire these guys off a Google search—besides their meticulousness and penchant for perfection, the AA team are Floraphiles eager to continue producing new Flora screen print projects. They are also NICE. We like NICE, and we prefer working with NICE.

Here's a video clip of Dan and Mike at work (on a non-Flora project). Their job sounds tortuous.

HT: the so-nice Sara Soskolne