Filed Under: "dogs"

Just released: a new Flora fine art print. The Big Bank Robbery (edition of 30) was reproduced from an undated tempera on board that reflects the nuances of Flora’s mid-1960s style. (The title was handwritten on the reverse.) The three-tiered tableau depicts colorful Flora mayhem: inscrutable monsters with misshapen features, Lego architecture, bug-eyed buildings, gumdrop color fills, and—yes—a bank robbery.

Postman bites dog! Or at least appears to be attempting to turn the tables. Tempera draft from The Day The Cow Sneezed, courtesy the Dr. Irvin Kerlan children’s literature collection. Although the book was published in 1957, archival correspondence between Flora and his Harcourt editor Margaret McElderry indicates the book was being developed as early as 1955, the same year Flora’s first children’s book, The Fabulous Firework Family, was published.

Detail, The Depot Fire, tempera on paper, 1963. This is about one-third of the entire work, which will be fully reproduced in our forthcoming book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora. We reviewed printer’s proofs of the pages this week, and the book is on schedule for publication by Fantagraphics in August or September.

Detail, The Day the Cow Sneezed, tempera draft, 1957, courtesy the Dr. Irvin Kerlan Collection, University of Minnesota. A gallery of early Flora roughs and overlays from the Kerlan collection will be included in our next Fantagraphics book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora (target publication date September 2009).

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

Detail: undated, untitled, and unidentified commercial illustrationca. late 1960s/early 1970s

Detail, draft manuscript, The Fabulous Firework Family (1955)

A new fine art print of a wild 1970 Jim Flora tempera painting has been listed on eBay. We have editioned 20 prints of Chance Encounter, and only two are being offered at the launch price. 15 minutes later: SOLD.Further prints of this edition are available at JimFlora.com.

unfinished, untitled pen & ink drawing, sketchbook entry, ca. early 1950s crawly critter (related?)

Fantagraphics Books Art Director Jacob McCovey writes: Flora is jaw-dropping to the point of being a spokesman for TMD, not to mention Bipolar Disorder. The entire tsunami of illustrators/designers making a new-wave career producing rock posters should be paying alms to the descendants of the man who made album design such an emotional experience.

This is a print detail of Railroad Town, a 1951 Jim Flora woodcut. What you see above is approximately one-tenth of the entire 11″ x 22.5″ work. The rest is equally outrageous. Barbara and I just returned from Knoxville, where we oversaw proofs for numbered, archival-quality limited edition relief prints of this iconic Flora work. All prints are restruck from the original Flora-cut block, and the edition will be produced by Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress. Prints…

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