Jim Phillips
Opelousas, LA
Storyteller, performer & folk artist—listening to, shaping, and sharing culture with humor, heart, and a love of sustainable fun.
Message
I am an educator, artist, builder, and lifelong advocate of what I call sustainable fun. I hold a master’s degree in Education and founded and ran both a private Montessori school and The Gourmet Language School for Children in Northern California. These ventures grounded my belief in hands-on learning and community-centered education. I later became certified to evaluate Louisiana’s Special Education and Gifted and Talented arts programs, expanding my work across visual art, theatre, and music.
My creative practice spans folk art, design, and construction. As a portrait artist, I specialize in watercolor and charcoal, often incorporating oil pastels, and have completed more than forty commissioned portraits. I am also a photographer and, since the 1970s, have developed a process I call Mandala Photography, explored in both film and digital formats. The first public presentation of this work took place during an Open Studio in San Francisco in 1991.
Beginning in 2006, I designed and built the Whirlybird Tower Studio and Artist Residency using recycled and repurposed materials. The tower serves as both a home for my work and a long-term folk art, design, and architectural project. Alongside my wife, I also helped create The Whirlybird, a folk-art honky tonk in South Louisiana. Since the early 2000s, we have hosted more than 300 cultural and artistic events there, centered on music, storytelling, and community gathering.
Across education, art, and building, my work reflects a belief that creativity and sustainability belong together—that art is strongest when it leaves room for joy, reuse, shared experience, and a little mischief.
Statement
I am an eclectic folk artist whose work spans painting, photography, writing, building, and performance. My practice reflects and celebrates cultural richness—both within my local community and across the wider world. Whether through watercolor and charcoal portraits, my Mandala Photography, or the folk-art structures I design and build, I seek to honor the traditions, values, and stories that shape human experience.
My work extends beyond visual media into writing and live performance, where I explore consciousness, memory, and community through storytelling and music. At The Whirlybird—a folk-art honky tonk in South Louisiana that I built with my wife—we have hosted more than 300 cultural and artistic events. These gatherings bring together voices across genres and generations and embody what I call sustainable fun: art that reuses, reimagines, and regenerates joy.
Blending traditional handmade craft with recycled, found, and digital materials, I experiment continuously—pushing toward new images, fresh rhythms, and shared moments of connection. Across brush, lens, structure, and voice, my work is an ongoing invitation: to see more clearly, to listen more deeply, and to find harmony in the vibrant mix of human stories.