Today's Daily Heller

Journalist/author/design historian Steve Heller brings a nicey to the Flora stora on his PRINT Magazine blog. Heller, who penned the 1998 New York Times obit for Flora, also wrote the Foreward in our first book, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora.

P.S. If the guy on the right at left looks familiar, here's why.

fanastic bike

Detail: undated, untitled, and unidentified commercial illustration
ca. late 1960s/early 1970s

puppets and rag dolls

"Next [Amelia and Pepito] went to the puppet show, and then they watched the acrobats. Best of all they liked the toy vendor. Pepito finally decided to buy a jumping jack. Amelia bought a rag doll and named it after her best friend Rosita because both of them had red cheeks."

Draft illustration, The Fabulous Firework Family, Flora's first published children's book (1955). Image from the James Flora Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs.

Triclops

That's what we call this beastie, who seems to be self-administering a third-eye implant while balancing a bird with no eyes on his fingertip. The original art is—well, we have no idea. The image appeared in very reduced form (postage stamp-sized) on a Flora business card from the 1950s.

critter cavalcade

Sketchbook untitled elements, with glue residue
ca. 1941-43

barnyard balancing act

Draft overlay, The Day the Cow Sneezed, 1957, found amid the James Flora Papers in the Dr. Irvin J. Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota. Who was Dr. Kerlan?

the evolution of Eulenspiegel

Pencil sketches for Till Eulenspiegel LP cover, 1955. The above skeletal figures eventually morphed into this rough layout:

... which was refined as this unfinished tempera setting:

... which evolved into this finished RCA Victor Red Seal cover:

Till Eulenspiegel was an impudent prankster in German folklore. Flora rendered several pen and ink drawings of the trickster in the 1990s. Perhaps he recognized a kindred spirit.

One for the Mütter Museum

Untitled tempera on card stock, dated 6/42. Hydra-headed mutants abound during this transitional period in Flora's life. Just a few months earlier he had departed his native Ohio and relocated to Connecticut to take a job with the Columbia Records art department under Alex Steinweiss.

Actually, Flora never outgrew multi-headed mutants with bonus appendages. They recur in every period of his artistic life.

modules

Detail, untitled tempera, ca. 1950-51. Above are eight of about 65 individual modules arrayed on the entire work. The elements are stylistically reminiscent of the Railroad Town woodcut, and cubicle art is a recurrent Flora motif.

Little Shop of Flora's

... is now open. Jim Flora hand-printed notecards, fine art bookmarks, and 2009 letterpress calendars at affordable prices.

We've also released a number of new fine art and album cover prints over the past few weeks but haven't had an opportunity to alert our mailing list. Here's two, but there's more over at JimFlora.com:

Self-Portrait, ca. 1947

Gunfight on the Roof, 1951

facial tics

Untitled tempera with pencil on board, ca. 1942-43. Disjointed face atop a tin-toy windup key torso. No problem with that.

deviltry ascendent

Illustration, "When the Night Wind Howls," by W.S. Gilbert, anthologized in A Red Skel(e)ton In Your Closet: Ghost Stories—Gay and Grim, selected and edited by actor/comic Red Skelton. The cover of this 1965 children's book was illustrated by the great Al Hirschfeld. The dozen-plus interior illustrations are unsigned and uncredited, but they reflect the unmistakable mischief of Mr. Flora.

loan shark

Commercial illustration, late 1950s, publication unknown. Tempera mechanical found in the Flora archives. The illustration's theme has contemporary resonance in the wake of the subprime meltdown.

The Great Freight Cartel

"The Great U.S. Freight Cartel" (detail), Fortune magazine, January 1957. The full original 14" x 5-1/2" tempera work was preserved by the artist and is stored—in great condition–in the Flora archives. It's one of the earliest extant original commercial illustrations in the collection. Of the hundreds of works-for-hire rendered by Flora for dozens of magazines during the 1940s and early 1950s, all that remain are periodical reproductions. From the late 1950s on, a sizable number of original illustrations and mechanicals were retained by the artist.

men vs. dragons

Untitled tempera illustration for unknown magazine, March 1958.

Stamped on reverse: "kill" — which doesn't refer to the dragon or the knight-in-a-necktie. It refers to the drawing, which was rejected for unknown reasons.

An earlier throwdown:

Duos

Another vintage Flora illustration adorns a record cover: Charles Wuorinen's Duos CD (Albany Records, January 2009 scheduled release). The untitled tempera of pink, green, and brown criss-crossing pedestrians dates from the early 1960s. The CD joins a growing gallery of new releases carrying the Flora album cover tradition into the 21st century.

Thanks to Howard Stokar, executive producer of the CD, for requesting the cover image.

Update (Jan. 12): CD now available.

canoe critters

This untitled tempera from the mid-1960s is currently in production as a silk-screen print by Aesthetic Apparatus, based in Minneapolis. It will be released with a companion print—different theme, but identical color palette. Both works, previously uncirculated, were discovered in a sketchbook in the Flora archives. We'll post the other print shortly.

Aesthetic Apparatus produced our Mambo For Cats and Pete Jolly Duo LP cover screen prints, as well as our Primer for Prophets series.

Head Harbor Light

Pen & ink with tempera, year unknown (ca. early 1990s). One of countless water's edge works in the collection. Flora lived on Long Island Sound, loved boats, loved the seaside, and drew inspiration from all.

Head Harbor Lighthouse, built from heavy timber in 1829, sits on Campobello Island in New Brunswick. It was the summer home of FDR.

that Latin Jazz stamp

A number of Floraphiles have alerted us to a new US Postal Service stamp commemorating Latin Jazz (issued September 8, 2008). They assert that: 1) the artist is, to put it kindly, "imitating Flora," or 2) Flora himself designed the stamp.

The stamp was illustrated by Michael Bartalos, a talented artist who would not deny a Flora influence -- in fact, he was friends with Jim. Arguably it is Bartalos to whom we owe the Flora renaissance. He "discovered" a largely forgotten Flora in retirement in 1992, and subsequently brought JD King into contact with the artist. It was JD who, in turn, introduced me to Flora in 1997. Thus evolved the Flora Underground, and the subsequent revival and cottage industry. Michael penned an eloquent reminiscence about his first meeting with the illustration legend in our book The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora.

The Latin Jazz design was assigned to Mike by Dick Sheaff, a (recently retired) USPS art director who is also a veteran Floraphile. Dick told me that when the assignment crossed his desk, he regretted that Flora wasn't alive to design it, so he turned to another exponent of a similar style of illustration. While the stamps remain available, they can be purchased online at USPS.com.

Jugglers edition

The Jugglers woodcut limited edition was completed last May, but we've been too preoccupied with other Flora business to release the work.

A Jugglers page has finally been posted at JimFlora.com and the first five numbered prints are now available. In the next week or two, we hope to enact an official launch. The print was produced by Bryan Baker at Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress, Knoxville. The work appears on page 58 in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.

This is the second 1950s Flora woodcut which we have offered in a limited edition, following Railroad Town in 2007.