Filed Under: "bonus limbs"

From The X-Ray Eye of Wallingford Hume, a proposed children’s book, 1943. Project abandoned, images unpublished.

‘Tis the season to Pete Jolly! A new silk-screen print has been introduced to our growing line of iconic Jim Flora merch—the artist’s swirly 1955 RCA Victor EP cover for the Pete Jolly Duo. This sleeve rarely turns up on eBay, and Floraphiles have been known to liquidate 401(k)’s to own battered copies. We don’t know much about pianist Jolly or his bassist, but apparently they couldn’t quit bopping long enough to sit still for…

On one of his earliest album covers for Columbia Records, Flora, with typical anatomical perversity, endowed jazz drummer Gene Krupa with four legs and five arms, the better to swat a Mattel-sized trap set amid a lemon meringue backdrop. Krupa’s face also got a makeover—the red and black checkerboard skin tint was Flora’s way of proclaiming, “I can’t do likeness!” (The cover was featured in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora.) FF to the early…

Untitled page from sketchbook (ca. 1940s, tempera and pencil)

Unpublished (and likely unexhibited) artifacts from Jim Flora sketchbooks Tempera on paper, early 1960s Pen sketch, early 1940s