Love (and some of its aspects)

Detail, The Many Aspects of Love, tempera on board, mid-1990s (and pre-dated by a pen & ink drawing). Not a top-tier work, the above partial reflects the extended mayhem. While there's plenty of vestigial Flora mischief (note demons in the head at left), works like The Many Aspects veer perilously close to self-parody. The complete work has not been published.

decapitation = success

Spot illustration, Research & Engineering magazine, April 1956, showcasing the secret to corporate achievement: sever your rival's head. The sword-wielding executive regiment works most effectively when your competitor is a sawtoothed reptile. In the above illustration the exec-suite platoon seems to have arrived after the fact, as evidenced by the detached noggin and "+" in place of eyeballs, which in cartoons usually signify death.

circus cavalcade

Top half of 1948 Columbia 78 rpm two-disc sleeve, Come to the Circus. The complete cover and interior illustrations were reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. The 2004 book featured most then-known Flora covers from his Columbia and RCA Victor years. We have since discovered others, and are searching for a handful of strays that (based on archival clues) may or may not exist. Rather than include recent discoveries in our subsequent Flora anthologies, we plan to eventually publish a complete stand-alone collection that will include sketches and alternate drafts from the Flora archives.

ship and helmsman

Untitled, undated, unfinished ship and helmsman sketches; tempera and pencil in sketchbook. These drafts, which probably date from the early to mid-1950s, are juxtaposed on the page as shown.

pretzel machine

Pretzel-making machine, spot illustration, Research & Engineering magazine, September 1955, marking Flora's debut in this short-lived monthly. The cover art is credited and the interior illos unmistakably reflect his whimsy, but no art director is listed in the masthead. Starting with the combined October/November issue Flora is ID'ed as art director, a position he held thru August 1956. An extensive gallery of Flora covers and interior illustrations from R&E was reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora.

chamber trio with angel

Illustration, Table of Contents page
Columbia Records Disc Digest, February 1946

The Perils of Overexuberance

Acrylic on canvas (20" x 16"), mid-1990s, one of countless unpublished and previously uncirculated (and mischievous and unfathomable) late-life works in the Flora archives.

Where Will It All End?

Quadruped of indeterminate zoological origin; detail, Where Will It All End?, tempera on paper (1993). The full work, previously unpublished, was reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora (page 66). The rest of the painting is no less disconcerting.

Flora was 79 at the time. Many of his 1990s works betray a wobbly hand. Bold ideas continued to flow from the artist's hallucinatory imagination, but the brushwork was less meticulous than in previous decades.

happy flower

Spot illustration, Portrait of a Great American, a 1943 CBS radio trade circular about singer Kate Smith's prowess raising money for war bonds. Most of the booklet's illustrations were reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, but this perky flower was omitted.

Bijou (sketch)

Pencil sketch from the mid-1990s of a cryptic tableau later rendered as a tempera on paper entitled Bijou. The painting retained most elements and positioning, with minor changes. The cloud was omitted, the plane enlarged, and the vertical theater marquee which reads "Adelaid" was renamed "Bijou." The painting is unpublished and uncirculated, and will be reproduced in a future anthology.

Skittish Horse

Tempera on paper, mid-1960s. The previously unpublished work was reproduced in our second book, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora. It's on our short list to issue as a fine art print.

frame job

Our Jim Flora "Plant You Now, Dig You Later" letterpress notecards are multi-purpose. One customer (whose name, forgive us, we've misplaced) had these 1950s jazz hepcats framed and sent us a snapshot. Others have used them as ... notecards.

Charlie Yup and pals

Detail from Flora's third children's book, Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys (1959). Charlie, who wields a mean scissors (his "Snip-Snap Boys" are paper cut-outs), is in the upper left astride Beezer, his "helicopter horse."

For fans—like us—of Flora's 1950s big-eyed figures, this was the end of the line, his last satisfying children's book on an artistic level. He wrote and illustrated 14 more, which sold well and charmed generations of young readers. But our favorites remain the first three (Fabulous Firework Family, The Day the Cow Sneezed, and Charlie Yup), all produced during the 1950s. His next book, Leopold the See-Through Crumbpicker, published in 1961, showcased an entirely different style of character illustration.

Charlie Yup is the rarest of Flora's books. It rarely turns up on Ebay or with antiquarian book dealers—and when it does, the price is lofty.

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.

The Day the Cow Sneezed

For years we've attempted to interest publishers in reprinting Jim Flora's 17 popular children's books. At the top of our wish-list were four titles: The Fabulous Firework Family (1955); The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957); Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys (1959); and Grampa's Ghost Stories (1978). We consider these the top-tier Flora kiddie books on an artistic level—with The Day the Cow Sneezed the most outlandish of the quartet.

We've had inquiries, offers, meetings, draft agreements, proposals—and subsequent turndowns from six or seven publishers (we've lost count). Reasons vary, but they never seem to have much to do with the quality of the books. They are business decisions, which we're in no position to second-guess.

Patience has paid off, as we recently signed with Enchanted Lion Books to reprint Cow Sneezed in Fall 2010. Publisher Claudia Zoe Bedrick is a Floraphile, and depending on the success of the first reprint, she hopes to continue republishing two Flora titles a year. There is even the possibility of printing Grampa's Ghost Stories, a two-color format work which contains some of Flora's most bizarre figures—in an all-new full-color edition.

Detail, The Day the Cow Sneezed

"the rumors were greatly exaggerated"

James Flora was born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, on this date in 1914. Legend has it he passed away on July 9, 1998. However, some refuse to acknowledge his departure. We see evidence of Flora's presence every day, so perhaps they're onto something.

Flora 2010 calendars

We've sold a bunch but they're still in stock: 2010 Jim Flora calendars. The spunky hyperactive figures date from Flora's mid-1950s RCA Victor LP period. Each calendar is letterpress printed one color at a time on card stock, and accessorized with a 12-month tearaway calendar. Buy one ($12.50) or a set of three at the Little Shop of Flora's. These keepsake datekeepers were produced by Yee-Haw Industries, of Knoxville.

The Stationmaster's Daughter

The full title of this undated (early- to mid-1940s) work is The Rape of the Stationmaster's Daughter, a tempera on paper, titled in pencil on the reverse. It was reproduced in our second Flora anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, and its anatomically absurd actors were adapted by designer Laura Lindgren for the cover. In 2008 we issued a fine art print.

A customer purchased a print last month and expressed admiration at the quality of both the work and the replica. But truth to tell, our Stationmaster print has not sold well. I suspect the subject matter creeps people out. It's sinister and diabolic—and goes beyond mere mischief. Who wants a cartoonish depiction of a sexual-assault-in-progress adorning the living room?

Yet this work will always be special to me. At the time Barbara Economon and I compiled our first book, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, in 2004, we had seen very little of Flora's early fine art. He was primarily known for his album covers and commercial music iconography, topical magazine illustrations, and children's books. What fine art of Flora's we had seen consisted mostly of his large, late-period maritime canvases, which did not capture our interest.

When I was first shown (by Flora's family) his fine art collection in storage on a rainy Saturday in October 2005, one of the first works pulled from a jammed portfolio was Stationmaster. I ogled it with amazement. It was gorgeous, even as it was disturbing. It was a depiction of evil, yet it had a magical quality, transporting me to another world, revealing the deeper Flora artistic vision that had been a family heirloom to that point. I didn't see darkness in the tableau. The aged, pigment-soaked paper evoked the privately creative side of Flora during the 1940s. I never forgot that moment: the birth of an obsession.

We don't know if the work was based on a historical incident or simply reflects Flora exorcising his demons with a paint brush. Barbara's color-matched print faithfully captures the original, right down to the muddy backwash. You can almost feel the brushstrokes.

Floraville skyline

Unlettered page from Primer for Prophets booklet, 1954. This image will not be part of our screen print alphabet series.

a curiously sinister lachrymosity

Detail, Okeh Records retail banner for then-new (1943) 78 rpm disc "Born To Lose" by Ted Daffan's Texans. The grieving beau has an odd tic: crying out of one eye, thereby expressing semi-sorrow over the loss of his gal.

The full banner was reproduced in our second anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora.