Some people dedicate their bodies to science. Shannon Wade, of Portland OR, dedicates hers to the art of Jim Flora. Not the first time, either. The above distended figure originally appeared on the title page of GUP, a 1942 Little Man Press publication written by Robert Lowry and illustrated by Flora.

Flora created the Columbia Records new release monthly Coda in early 1943 and illustrated most issues thru 1945 (after which the journal morphed into Disc Digest). The March 1944 issue is one of Flora’s most satisfying on an artistic level. The cover (above) illustrates a Columbia Masterworks four-disc album (price: $4.50) of Igor Stravinsky conducting his own Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), described in Coda as “a ballet based on the paganistic…

Today we launch a new Jim Flora fine art print: Ferris Wheel Fireworks, adapted from Flora’s second kiddie book, The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957). The long-sought book will be reprinted this fall by Enchanted Lion. At that time we’ll issue a print of the book cover, which includes the artist’s fabulous hand-typography. However, during the image restoration process, Flora archivist/printmaker Barbara Economon saw the print possibilities of the book’s chaotic two-page (34-35) tableau. The…

Akiko Hashimoto sends this snapshot from her home in Japan: The Flora prints displayed are The Big Bank Robbery (ca. 1963) and Gunfight on the Roof (ca. 1951). A series of original 1950s Flora LPs sits on a shelf below.

Fletcher Henderson, tempera on paper, 1942, as reproduced in our third anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. In the 1920s, exploring ideas gleaned from orchestra leader Paul Whiteman, pianist Henderson created the template for what evolved into the jazz “swing” big bands of the 1930s. He was one of the most influential musicians/bandleaders of the 1920s, but others achieved greater and more lasting fame developing concepts pioneered by Henderson. Flora, a lifelong jazz…

New launch: a miniature (7″ x 8″) giclée open edition print (at $25/ea.) of a previously unpublished and uncirculated mid-1990s Flora pen & ink drawing. Celebrities portrays anonymous showbiz figures as freakshow caricatures. This is our second open edition, low-cost fine art print; Mambo For Cats was launched last October.

Untitled pen & ink and tempera (or watercolor) on paper from the late 1980s/early 1990s, featuring a colorful zoom-in on an ocean liner with three faceless moptops on deck. This work dates from the close of Flora’s maritime period (1980s), probably around the time, as he told an interviewer in the 1990s, that he’d “painted himself out of ships.” His large maritime canvases of the 1980s were historically based, spectacularly detailed and less primitive. In…

Caution: archivists at work. Snapshot of two 1943 artifacts parked on a collapsible card table at CT storage facility housing Flora collection. Larger work is Charlie’s Egg, a tempera on (the back of a) Columbia Records convention brochure; the bottom partial is one of two covers for an unpublished kiddie book, The X-Ray Eye of Wallingford Hume. Both images were fully reproduced in our third Flora anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. Photo:…

Columbia Coda, April 1952, listing 7″ discs featuring recordings of legendary jazz cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, born this date in 1903. The page is crowned with a Flora horn. At the time this circular was published, Beiderbecke would have been a relatively young age 49—if he hadn’t died 21 years before (which was 17 years before the introduction of the 7″ disc). We wrote about Bix @ 106, chronicling his enormous musical significance as well as…

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.