Filed Under: "cutaways"

Spot illustrations for Columbia Records new release monthly, Coda.

Baltimore, tempera on heavy stock, early 1960s

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 Previously unpublished and uncirculated work (rendered in tempera and pencil) discovered in sketchpad.

Topical illustration (mechanical), tempera on paper, ca. 1961. Assignment, title, periodical, and publication date unknown. The Flora collection contains dozens of such illustrations of unknown provenance. The crosshairs at the corners are printer’s registration marks, used for aligning overlays and film plates.

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.

In an art class called “Soft Sculpture” at the University of Washington (Seattle), students were instructed to transform a favorite painting into food sculpture. SunShine McWane adapted Flora’s untitled 1950-51 tempera we casually refer to as “Gunfight on the Roof” (original work below). The resulting mixed-media delicacy, entitled “Cheese City,” was completed in January 2009. The materials—ingredients, actually—used by McWane include cheese (cheddar, Swiss, Colby, jalapeño jack), acrylic paint, plastic (GI Joe figures), one wire…

This cutaway view of a cruise ship affords a glimpse into cabin and deck activities—some naughty, some nice. The undated, unpublished pen & ink on tablet paper probably dates from Flora’s “late ship period” around 1988-90, when he was transitioning away from maritime motifs and back to music, architecture, portraits, and landscapes. His large acrylic ship canvases rendered during the 1980s were more lifelike than the cartoonish styles for which he’d been renowned as a…

This ship is part of a large untitled tempera harbor montage painted by Flora on a slab of masonite around 1951. How “large”? How much of a “part”? After isolating the above detail, I copied and pasted it horizontally and vertically over the full original to figure out how many elements this size could fit in the complete image field. Outcome: the above detail represents 1/52nd of the entire work.

Spot illustration, “College: Whether to Go / Where to Go,” Mademoiselle, 1953

Pen & ink on sketch pad paper, early- to mid-1990s

Detail, The First Five Years, acrylic on wood, ca. early 1970s. The second of six horizontal tiers depicting incidents during the artist’s childhood. Exactly what these figures represent—good question.

Undetermined media (framed, under glass): print with touch-up, or black tempera, ca. 1968, detail. Previous detail posted on August 20.