Filed Under: "Ohio"

Mount Adams ascension, one of a series of woodcut prints the young Flora rendered for the Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati’s August 1941 publication, Life Association News. The images accompanied an article entitled “Where to go … What to do … While you’re in Cincinnati.” These woodcuts have not been republished since their first appearance seven decades ago. The location of the original wood blocks is unknown.

This three-tiered montage appeared in Fortune magazine in 1947 as part of a 48-state series sponsored by the Container Corporation of America. Flora, an Ohio native, was commissioned to illustrate his birth state. A color version—as it ran in Fortune—was reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora. Tearsheets turn up periodically on Ebay. The above greyscale version—presumably the original, described as “watercolor, gouache, and pencil on paperboard”—is in the Smithsonian collection, according to their…

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.

Detail from “Ohio,” full-page illustration commissioned by Container Corporation of America, 1947. The montage (fully reproduced in The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora, page 167) originally appeared in several nationally distributed magazines, including Fortune and Time. A detail previously posted here came from a scan of the magazine tearsheet. The above detail originated from a higher-resolution color print issued in 1948 by CCA. As their name implies, CCA manufactured containers. The one pictured in cross-section…

Detail, “Ohio,” illustration for Container Corporation of America Fortune magazine, 1947

Update: Two prints sold. Edition now available at JimFlora.com. Now listed on eBay: a limited-edition, archival-quality fine art print of an uncirculated 1963 Flora tempera painting, Back to Bellefontaine. Flora was born in Bellefontaine, Logan County, Ohio, in 1914, and lived there until 1934, when he enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Only 25 prints were produced for this edition. Prints #25/25 and 24/25 are being offered at the launch price of $200/ea. Prices…

Mount Adams Winter Scene (1937) was painted by Flora while studying at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and is the only existing color work from his academy days. It may, in fact, be the earliest existing Flora work—period. (There are undated student-era sketches.) The style, of course, does not reflect Flora’s future direction. At the academy he was training to be a fine artist, and such were his aspirations. It’s ironic that in the depths…

Choo-choo, woo-woo! Another small segment from a larger work (also featured in its entirety in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora). No date attributed to this work, nor is it titled, but its whistle has a familiar refrain. Jim Flora’s affinity for the railroad yard and its denizens dates back to the mid-1930s when he returned to his home state of Ohio after exploring a brief scholarship granted to him by the Boston Architectural…