FRONT TAILS
THE ICONIC ART OF
JIM PHILLIPS
slamskatemag.com.au
By O l I v E R P E l l I N g
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Everybody knows that buying a deck with a lame graphic will make you skate like a pussy. Likewise, everybody knows that buying a deck with a rad graphic will make you skate like a god. There are countless legendary skateboard artists that have contributed their creative genius to the industry over the years. There are few, however, that have contributed to helping skateboarders skate like gods quite like Jim Phillips has. A Santa Cruz local since birth, this guy is the real deal. Even if you haven’t heard of Jim Phillips, you can rest assured that you will have seen his work. The man is responsible for some of the most iconic graphics that have ever graced the skateboarding world. Best known for his work with OG skate company Santa Cruz, Jim’s portfolio includes the Santa Cruz logo, Screaming Hand, Slasher, the Independent Trucks logo and thousands of Santa Cruz skateboard, T-shirt, sticker and ad art designs. Jim’s allegiance to Santa Cruz began in 1975, when he began work as their art director, and he’s still producing original pieces for them to this day. The Screaming Hand in particular is one of the most famous and widely imitated (or ripped off) pieces of skate art of all time. “Screaming Hand to me is like Mickey Mouse was to Walt Disney,” says Jim. “Walt was so into Mickey that on opening night of his early cartoons he would stand in the back of the theatre and pantomime Mickey’s movements and say all his lines. Walt was Mickey, and I guess in some way I am Screaming Hand.” Jim’s dad was in the army during his childhood, which meant the family was often moving from town to town. Leaving friends behind became the norm for Jim and he found drawing a comfort that he could take with him wherever he went. “It only takes a pencil to do it wherever you go,” he says. Jim is responsible for some of the most instantly recognisable skateboard graphics of all time. It’s safe to say that skateboard art today would not be what it is if it weren’t for Jim’s extensive contribution over the decades. “I’m a product of my environment,” he says. “Peter Yarrow (American musician) once said ‘You are what you eat’, and I would add: ‘You are where you are.’ Everything that has happened to me came by way of the beach and the ocean. I’ve often felt that I was the Forrest Gump of surf, skate and rock, as I just happened to be at the right place at the right time when these events in both skateboarding and surfing came into their glory.” As a kid, Jim used to sit on the beach on balmy California evenings and draw pictures of the older surfers as they rode the waves. It dawned on him that art was something he had a knack for in 1949. “It was one of those memories that stay with you for ever,”
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he recalls. “I was around five years old and I made a drawing that I thought was quite good. I brought it down to show my mom who was busy in the kitchen and I held it up and said, ‘See?’ She looked at it and gruffly replied, ‘See what?’ I went back in my room and licked my wounds, determined that I would someday prove my talent to her. I’m not sure I ever did, and my father repeatedly said I was wasting my time until his dying day, and he lived to be 92. Mostly it snuck up on me.” Jim often tried to entertain classmates by passing them his sketches. By junior high people began approaching him to ask if he could paint things like monsters across the dashboards of their cars. “I was so stoked to do it I often neglected to charge anything. That was the beginning of my art career,” he says. Throughout school, Jim’s drawings would often get him in trouble. The dean of one of his schools had an inch-thick folder of drawings that various traditional teachers had confiscated and he received countless lectures about the wrongs of his work. To this day, some of Jim’s artwork still causes uproar amongst conservative busybodies. Still, Jim remains defiant. “I’ve done drawings that resulted in full-blown sign-carrying protest demonstrations on the main street of downtown Santa Cruz, but I’m not sorry about those,” he says. “A strong reaction of any kind shows they’re seriously looking at your artwork.” In 2011, the same things inspire Jim Philips as when he first started doodling on those Californian beaches, even if he admits occasionally straying from his roots to help pay the bills. “There are times in every commercial artist’s career when they pursue different directions trying to please a market in order to make a living and I’ve done plenty of that. It’s called prostitution,” he says. “I’m very happy when I can return to my foundational roots and skateboard art is the closest thing that has allowed that for me.” Jim’s work rate hasn’t slowed up over the years and he’s still hard grafting with his long-time partner, Santa Cruz skateboards. “I love doing decks, so I turn almost everything else away. But I try to keep my schedule uncomplicated so I can be free to surf the best tides and swells.” More than 60 years after he first started drawing in Santa Cruz, Jim Phillips is still putting pencil to paper and releasing some of the best graphics money can buy. Most recently, he’s been doing the artwork for Remind Insoles, a company that specialise in orthopaedic insoles for skateboarders. With his son, Jimbo, following in his footsteps and producing amazing artwork of his own, it looks like the Phillips legacy is set to live on. Jim Phillip’s work will always be a beacon of old school goodness in the skateboarding world and for that, we can only be thankful.
12/07/11 4:56 PM