illostribute.com | investigation through interpretation
Jim Flora
The following is taken from Jim Flora expert and curator, Irwin Chusid: Jim Flora is best-known for his wild jazz and classical album covers for Columbia Records (late 1940s) and RCA Victor (1950s). He authored and illustrated 17 popular children’s books and flourished for decades as a magazine illustrator. Few realize, however, that Flora (1914-1998) [...]
Albert Dorne
Albert Dorne’s success as an illustrator, and later as a businessman, is a resounding testament to good old-fashioned hard work and perseverance. Born into the slums of New York’s East Side in 1904, Dorne’s childhood was marred by severe poverty and illness. Overcoming tuberculosis, a heart condition, as well as a thoroughly inadequate education, Albert [...]
Mary Blair
Widely recognized for her trend-setting collaborations with industry pioneer Walt Disney, concept artist Mary Blair forever altered the landscape of American animation with her innovative and uncompromising artistic vision. To many, Blair was the antithesis to Disney’s “illusion of life,” a successful conceptual and visual formula created with early films like Snow White and the [...]