Filed Under: "checkerboard coloring"

These two tempera with pencil illustrations, differently titled yet seemingly related, were discovered in a mid-1960s Flora sketchpad pages apart. Both have a completed look, yet no discernible (or documented) purpose. Well-Fed At Last is signed, which indicates the artist considered the work finished and fit to behold. The alligator has a vicious or peeved demeanor. He has no love.   Local Government or the Commuter is unsigned, but has the added element of a…

Spot illustration, promotional brochure for trade journal Electromechanical Design: Components and Systems, 1957. Flora illustrated a number of covers for the monthly from 1957 to 1960.

Tempera on heavy stock (actually, painted on the reverse of an oversized 1943 Columbia Records convention program; clean paper was rationed and scarce during World War II). The previously uncirculated and largely unseen work was first published in our third anthology, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. We issued a limited edition fine art print of the work in 2009. The identity of Charlie remains unknown.

Artmuse.com recently issued two new—and low-cost—Jim Flora limited edition fine art prints. The above, based on a 1964 untitled and previously uncirculated work discovered in the Flora collection, has been casually tagged Brain Map to differentiate it from countless other works left unnamed by the artist. The work was first published in our 2007 Fantagraphics anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora. The print can be purchased in several different sizes at various price…

Untitled, undated (ca. mid-1960s) ship in cross-cut view. Previously unpublished and uncirculated work (rendered in tempera and pencil) discovered in sketchpad.

untitled tempera & pencil on paper found in early 1960s-era sketchbook

Untitled tempera on board, 1964, reproduced in our second book, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora (Fantagraphics, 2007). Though ten years separate the works, certain elements are reminiscent of the 1954 RCA Victor LP Shorty Rogers Courts the Count.

Peter Ceragioli Jr. was born this day in 1932. You may not recognize this West Coast jazz pianist, accordionist, and composer by his birth name. Beyond TV and film soundtrack cognoscenti, he’s probably obscure even by his stage name—Pete Jolly. The keyboardist was a child prodigy on accordion, as spaceagepop.com points out: When he was eight, he made his first broadcast appearance, billed as “The Boy Wonder Accordionist” on CBS Radio’s Hobby Lobby. The show’s…

Jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman, as portrayed by Flora for the March 1952 issue of Columbia’s monthly Coda new release booklet. Goodman was a founding father of the mid-1930s jazz big band (“swing”) style—launched in force after he hired arranger Fletcher Henderson in 1935. As he matured, he performed and recorded classical repertoire; the above figures illustrated Coda’s preview of Goodman’s recording (with the American Art Quartet) of Mozart’s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings. Flora was…

Bandleader/clarinetist Woodrow Charles “Woody” Herman (1913-1987) rendered by Flora in the June 1946 issue of Columbia Records Disc Digest. Flora used alternating-color patterns throughout his career (see examples here, here and here). Because he was partly color-blind, skin tints were irrelevant. Herman was born today 97 years ago (less than a year before Flora).

Untitled acrylic on board, ca. mid-1960s. This modular work echoes illustrations Flora provided for the covers of Computer Design magazine during the 1960s and ’70s. We’ve yet to determine whether this painting or an adaptation actually graced a CD cover. If not, this blog post might represent its first public exposure (we haven’t reproduced this work in any of our Flora anthologies to date).

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…