Filed Under: "photos"

The August issue of Juxtapoz magazine includes a feature article on Jim Flora, written by someone named Irwin Chusid (who denies responsibility for the article’s poorly constructed sentences, mangled syntax, bad grammar, and blown punchlines; to quote Erich von Stroheim, it was edited by “someone who had nothing on his mind but his hat”). Regardless of the feature’s narrative flaws, the Flora works reproduced therein are magnificent, and include the late 1940s painting The Rape…

Printed, matted and framed by Yee-Haw Industrial Letterpress,Knoxville TN, exhibited at NYC Stationery Show May 2007,to introduce a limited line of Flora cards and calendars.Production underway, projected completion late July.

Year Zero in the Flora Revival was 1992 when Michael Bartalos cold-called the 78-year-old artist to ask about his 1940s and ’50s album cover illustrations, which evoked a mothballed era to the robust, productive retiree. Recalling Mike’s curiosity, Flora later said, “I felt like a fossil that had just been dug up.” Thus began the archaeology, which continues to unearth ancient marvels. The above flashbulb-bleached vignette was snapped at A-D Gallery in June 1943 during…

A Flora zoo would be a wondrous place to take your three-armed, six-eyed kids. The animals are exotic—often you can’t tell what species they belong to. Dogs and pigs, cats and cows, monkeys and donkeys—Flora rendered them with affection but disdained the laws of zoology. In Floraworld, four-legged critters could fly or drive cars, and the color of their fur or hide was a Pantone dart-toss. Here’s a curious Flora bestiary (montage by Barb). More…