Jim Flora

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Jim Flora Illustrator and album cover artist in the 1940s and 1950s, b. Bellefontaine, OH, 1914, d. Rowayton, CT, 1998. He lived mostly in Rowayton, CT. Irwin Chusid writes: Flora's album covers pulsed with angular hepcats bearing funnel-tapered noses and shark-fin chins who fingered cockeyed pianos and honked lollipop-hued horns. Yet this childlike exuberance was subverted by a tinge of the diabolic. Flora wreaked havoc with the laws of physics, conjuring flying musicians, levitating instruments, and wobbly dimensional perspectives. Taking liberties with human anatomy, he drew bonded bodies and misshapen heads, while inking ghoulish skin tints and grafting mutant appendages. He was not averse to pigmenting jazz legends Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa like bedspread patterns. On some Flora figures, three legs and five arms were standard equipment, with spare eyeballs optional. His rarely seen fine artworks reflect the same comic yet disturbing qualities. "He was a monster," said artist and Floraphile JD King. So were many of his creations. His headline in a 1953 issue of Park East Magazine inspired Nick Curtis to create the font Cool Cat Jim NF (2005). Other Jim Flora fonts revived by Nick Curtis include Jimbatz NF (2005, dingbats) and Flora Dora NF (2003). P22 Type Foundry has released Flora Mambo (2010), a font set based on playful hand-lettering from the 1955 Jim Flora Mambo For Cats RCA Victor album cover. The set includes Flornaments, consisting of 72 miniature figure icons (dingbats) from Flora artworks. Scans of some of his album covers and illustrations: Collaboration, Dog, Kallao set, Solomon's Seal (1942), The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957), Self Portrait. P22 link.	EXTERNAL LINKS Jim Flora [Designer info] Monotype link MyFonts search Monotype search Fontspring search Google search INTERNAL LINKS Type scene in Connecticut ⦿ Type scene in Ohio ⦿ Nick Curtis ⦿ Dingbats (original) ⦿