wide-eyed awake

Illustration detail, "Long Day's Journey Into the Insomniac's Night"
New York Times Magazine, October 1, 1967

media infiltration

Flora and WFMU: a sustaining relationship

Hampton Roads (pt 1)

Undetermined media (framed, under glass): print with touch-up, or black tempera, ca. 1968, detail. Another detail posted on December 2.

Daisy Holiday

Our friend Takashi Okada of Tokyo has become the pre-eminent Floraphile in Japan. Besides being an avid customer of Jim Flora fine art prints, Takashi recently designed the Daisy Holiday CD package, which adapts Flora's 1947 Green Mansions resort brochure illustration (licensed from the Flora estate). Additional Flora elements appear on the jewel case inlay and in the booklet.

Here's a Tokyo record store display flush with Flora. If you don't live in that part of the world, the CD is available from Amazon, cdUniverse, and YesAsia. When this display is taken down, someone is gonna have a rare Flora Daisy Holiday poster.

Takashi is also publishing a compendium of over 150 feline images from record album covers. The book's front will be adorned with Flora's classic 1955 Mambo For Cats RCA Victor LP illustration, and the back will feature a piano-perched kitty from the Shorty Rogers-Andre Previn Collaboration EP. We'll provide more info about the book upon publication.

Badlands

REACH!

Heck, it's only pretend gunplay. Detail, Primer for Prophets booklet, commissioned by CBS-TV, 1954.

Kid-lit

We've finally collected an online gallery of Flora's 20 children's books (17 of which he authored). They're up for viewing at JimFloraArt.com, the Flora family website.

While you're there, the site has had a makeover and includes three pages of original Flora art from the 1990s that's being offered for sale.

another anatomical curiosity

Pen drawing on onionskin paper with glue residue, early 1940s, from scrapbook. This freakish apparition has been blessed by the artist with bonus arms that appear to be appendages of his head, which has a stem on which to balance a coat hanger.

canoe critter

detail, untitled tempera on paper found in sketchbook, ca. mid-1960s

scraps from the archives

Untitled pen drawing on onionskin paper, early 1940s, from scrapbook. Brownish residue caused by glue applied by the artist, who is also responsible for the irregular trim. There are hundreds of such miniatures in the collection.

The Kerlan Collection

Farm scene draft for The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957), Flora's second children's book. The landscape image is one of 80 scans Barbara and I recently acquired from the Kerlan Collection at the University of Minnesota. We plan to reproduce a number of these early work pages in our third book of Floriana, currently being compiled and written.

Among the artifacts — donated to the University by the artist — was an eye-popping version of Flora's first children's book, The Fabulous Firework Family (1955). At first glance, we thought it was a badly preserved first edition because the pages were detached and stuffed between covers. Upon closer inspection, we discovered that Flora had reconstructed the book by sequencing his original drafts of each page, which were rendered on various types of paper in pencil, pen and watercolor. He then trimmed text sections from a printed edition and glued them in position on each page.

The one-of-a-kind copy was inscribed with affection to Dr. Kerlan.

elemental train

Detail, untitled tempera on paper, 1970

the kontinuing KittyGate kronicles ...

Deeper into Flora

This is a test.

Go here.

In the green menu at the left, click "request a song."

Select a letter (or a number) at the top — any one.

Select an artist — any artist. One you know, one you don't — it's just a drill. (Caveat: a band whose name begins with "The" appears under "T." Hence, there are more "T" artists than any other letter.)

Click on album title (not cover thumbnail).

Request a song -- any song. It's just a drill.

Note pop-up window illustration. Smile a little. Please?

As long as you're Deeper Into Music, stick around and listen. Is there another station in the galaxy where "The Death of Ferdinand De Saussure" by Magnetic Fields and "Shang a Dang Dang" by Lambchop are in heavy rotation?

Fauna by Flora 2

Draft illustration, The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957)
Flora's second children's book
That goat gets around.

night rider

Top section of untitled three-tiered tempera and pencil, from sketchbook, ca. early 1950s. The two lower tiers, using the same color palette, are no less comically inscrutable.

Taken Before His Time

Pen and ink, 1998. One of several works by Flora with this title, in various media, rendered in the final years of his life.

On this date ten years ago, James Flora passed away at age 84. Nine days later the New York Times published an obit by Steven Heller.

I posted a tribute at the WFMU blog, citing Flora's posthumous contributions to the station's visual identity.

Refresh at your leisure

We don't change header images at JimFlora.com every week; headers change as often as you refresh the page. There are more than a dozen frisky images in random rotation, with two new ones added — and two old ones shelved — every couple of weeks. They don't rotate in sequence; you might have to refresh 50X to view them all.

There's also a half-dozen footers, in case you're inclined to scroll downward.




Detail, Saturday Night at Stonington, tempera, ca. late 1960s

You = target

You will buy Jim Flora fine art prints. You are powerless against our superior weaponry. We hope.

Paradises Lost

"Paradises Lost," illustration
Venture: The Traveler's World
June 1964 (premiere issue)

Thanks to Mike Baehr of Fantagraphics.

Primer for Prophets 2nd series

NOW AVAILABLE: the next four works in the Primer for Prophets screen print series. Cool Flora illustrations of the American nuclear family (and their weird pets) during the 1950s, when donuts and cake were considered essential nutrients, little girls could multi-task with brushes, and dogs craved beer!

The images derive from a 1954 trade-only alphabet booklet that Flora illustrated for CBS-TV. The second set of prints features KISSED, COOKED, GROOMED, and QUAFFED. Edition of 100 (each image), hand-numbered and authenticated. Each individual print sells for $50. A FULL SET of four prints can be purchased for $175.00 thru any of the above single-print pages at JimFlora.com.

The first series (ATE, DROVE, JIVED, and SMOKED) is still available as a set or individually. Prices have been raised to $60/print (except JIVED: $125) and $200/set due to depletion of stock. Prices will continue to rise as we sell down.

If you want all eight prints for $350, contact us.