Filed Under: "books"

Google yourself. Discover forgotten incidents from your past—like this 2005 interview by Coury Turczyn for PopCult magazine. The occasion was the publication of The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, and tho the interview is dotted with Flora iconography, it also touches on outsider music, record collecting, the Langley Schools Music Project, R. Stevie Moore, and Shooby Taylor, the Human Horn. Three years later Cory wrote an incisive cover story about Flora for Knoxville’s Metro Pulse.

Jim Flora’s 1954 cosmopolitan woodcut, Manhattan, has been adapted for the cover of a new music folio. Broadway Celebrates The Big Apple: Over 100 Years of Show Tunes About New York City, was launched January 5 by Alfred Publishing Co. Cary Ginell, Associate Editor for Popular Music at Alfred, is a Flora fan who discussed image licensing with us last year. After reviewing samples, Ginell deemed the Manhattan cityscape ideally suited for this developing project….

Our next Flora compendium is being compendicated. Target publication: September 2009, by Fantagraphics. Cover design by Laura Lindgren. UPDATE (1 June 2009): Publication announced first week of August.

Japanese TV stars use odd commodities for dislodging food particles.

Not quite hot on the heels of The Mischievous Art and The Curiously Sinister Art, Barbara and I are now compiling a third volume of Floriana. Tentatively titled The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, the book will be published by Fantagraphics in July or August 2009. Designer Laura Lindgren will once again transform our loosely organized text and Flora’s genial monstrosities into a tight, 180-page coffeetable bouquet. Over the next year, this blog will…

Detail from The Rape of the Stationmaster’s Daughter, an undated early 1940s tempera on paper. Elements of this work were adapted by designer Laura Lindgren for the cover of The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, and the complete painting was featured in the book. On the production schedule for March 2008: the fine art print.

Artifact from the archives: 1954 RCA Victor requisition order for the {ahem!} legendary Mambo For Cats album cover illustration. The work was commissioned by label art director—and longtime Flora buddy—Robert M. Jones, who signed the PO (fee unspecified). The finished sleeve encased a 12″ slab of vinyl, we seem to recall. This iconic Flora design was featured in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, and has recently been marketed as a t-shirt, a fridge magnet,…

Perhaps we haven’t been formally introduced. I’m the second book of Jim Flora art published by Fantagraphics. I was born in February and shortly thereafter found myself distributed in bookstores and on the virtual shelves of e-tailers. Even though I’m almost four months old, some of you aren’t aware of my existence. So I just wanted to say “Hi,” and give you a gentle poke in the ribs. Go find me and take me home….

The Flora Juggernaut appears unstoppable. Our new book, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, now in its 15th printing since publication a fortnight ago, leapfrogged two Harry Potter totboilers to perch Kong-like atop the New York Times Best-Seller list. Statues of the artist are currently being commissioned in his birthplace of Bellfontaine, Ohio, and in Rowayton, Connecticut, his adopted hometown. Premiere editions of the new U.S. Postal Service’s Mambo For Cats first-class stamp became…