SANTA CRUZ — Jim Phillips, the creator of some of Santa Cruz’s most iconic imagery, has opened his first solo art gallery in his hometown at 81 years old.
The show, titled “Jim Phillips: New Fine Art Prints and Classic ’70s and ’80s Pen and Ink Drawings,” opened Friday at the R. Blitzer Gallery on Santa Cruz’s Westside, and features 15 new large scale art prints and 30 hand-dipped pen and ink drawings from 1971 to 2026.
Phillips, a lifelong Santa Cruz resident, has been creating art since his childhood. He spent many of his days in school drawing on his notebooks in classes, where he originally came up with the vision for his now-famous work, the “Screaming Hand.”
“I got into it in high school or junior high,” Phillips said. “I thought it was expressive — I had that angst, that teenage angst.”
A 3D “Screaming Hand” is included in Jim Phillips’ show at the R. Blitzer Gallery. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
In 1985, when tasked with designing a logo for Santa Cruz Skateboards and NHS Inc., Phillips solidified his “Screaming Hand” design. With the help of licensing through NHS, the design blossomed into stickers, skateboard wheels, T-shirts and endless copies worn in 85 countries around the world.
Central to the show are Phillips’ “Hand Wave” and “Screaming Hand” pieces, but it will also feature works throughout his career from as early as the 1970s. At its core, the gallery is a retrospective of Phillips’ life and artistic ecosystem.
“I think it’s the greatest thing because I put a lot of time into this art and it (the gallery) gives it its rightful time to shine,” Phillips said.
Phillips grew up as a surfer kid in Santa Cruz, which influenced much of his early work. His first published art piece was printed in Surfers Quarterly in 1962.
Much of Phillips’ art is tied to Santa Cruz’s surf and skate culture, as well as his time producing rock posters for artists like The Doors, James Brown and Neil Young, who Phillips has had a connection with throughout his career.
Phillips worked alongside Young in the mid-1970s, when he was asked to create a poster and potential album cover for Young’s band, The Ducks. However, the album was never released due to contract issues with Young, and Phillips’ art for the project laid dormant until the album was finally released in 2023 with Phillips’ art as the cover.
Phillips’ work has also been shown in numerous art exhibits worldwide, including a celebration of the “Screaming Hand” in 2016, where over 50 global artists contributed their own renditions of the hand for a show that traveled to galleries across North America, Europe and Asia.
Jim Phillips hung his show at the R. Blitzer Gallery last week. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
Through his licensing agreement with NHS Inc., Phillips’ work has also appeared in collaborations with “The Simpsons,” “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “Star Wars” and Marvel Comics.
The idea for the gallery came from Richard Reilly, who manages Phillips’ fine art sales.
When Reilly moved back to Northern California from Manhattan in 2012, one of his main objectives was to meet Phillips, as he had been collecting Phillips’ work, but noticed the market for his art was hard to track down. Once he started working with Phillips in 2020 with their company ArtByrne, Reilly helped him get his work turned into prints and out to a broader audience. Until recently, Reilly said, people could only buy Phillips’ fine art online sporadically — there was no centralized market for his fine art.
Phillips said the gallery is a natural extension of Reilly’s love for collecting art.
Phillips’ works have been collected and passed around the world, being seen by people everywhere except in an art gallery in his hometown.
“It’s mind-blowing that Jim has never had a single solo, one-man show in his hometown, which was a shocker to me,” Reilly said. “So we put one together.”
Jim Phillips’ graphics and surf and skate-themed artworks are global cultural phenomenon, with millions of fans drawn to the Santa Cruz “Red Dot” and the “Screaming Hand” which he created in 1985. His art has seen major collaborations with The Simpsons, Pokémon, Star Wars and Marvel Comics, and he has designed album art and rock posters for the Doors, Cream, James Brown, Moby Grape and Neil Young. At age 81, he has mounted his first ever one-person show at the R. Blitzer Gallery in Santa Cruz. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
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Jim Phillips’ graphics and surf and skate-themed artworks are global cultural phenomenon, with millions of fans drawn to the Santa Cruz “Red Dot” and the “Screaming Hand” which he created in 1985. His art has seen major collaborations with The Simpsons, Pokémon, Star Wars and Marvel Comics, and he has designed album art and rock posters for the Doors, Cream, James Brown, Moby Grape and Neil Young. At age 81, he has mounted his first ever one-person show at the R. Blitzer Gallery in Santa Cruz. (Shmuel Thaler — Santa Cruz Sentinel)
One of the reasons for having the gallery is so that people can bring home their own copies of Phillips’ work through his prints, Phillips said.
“That’s the whole angle of the show is that the prints are for sale,” he said. “Which makes them affordable because the original art is astronomical.”
The R. Blitzer Gallery was “a godsend” as a space for Phillips’ work, Reilly said, with its high ceilings and massive wall space to display the art. Phillips has works that are acrylic on canvas or on other materials like Masonite panels, such as his piece, “Moonskull.” Other work includes ink on scratchboard for his piece “The Camel,” or a solid bronze rendition of the “Screaming Hand.”
Phillips said he thinks the gallery show may be his “swan song,” though he intends to keep moving forward with his art, as his work with the gallery excited and revitalized him.
The Santa Cruz show is the first in a series of shows, which the two hope to take on tour through California and to Phillips’ widespread fanbase.
The free show celebrated its opening Friday, and will be at the R. Blitzer Gallery through June 15.
“We want a really positive, nuclear explosion of happiness for Jim’s thousands of fans in this region to be able to come not only to see the art live, but be able to buy the prints,” Reilly said.