By Jason Heller, Westword
The Screaming Hand — even if you don’t know it by name, you’ve likely seen it at some point in your life, probably on a skater’s hoodie, the bottom of a snowboard or even tattooed on some surfer’s calf. Like all iconic graphics of its kind, it’s as vivid as it is open to interpretation: an amputated hand with a screaming mouth in the middle. As simple and as evocative as that.
Jim Phillips is the legendary artist behind the Screaming Hand, and that’s just one of the innumerable designs he’s created since he latched onto the burgeoning skate and surf culture of his hometown of Santa Cruz, California, in the 1970s. Before Instagram, and before artists worried about platforms and branding, Phillips hurled his eye-gouging illustrations into the world via the Santa Cruz Skateboard company — to be picked up, appropriated and cherished by generations of skaters, surfers, street artists, graphic designers, punk rockers and almost everyone in between…
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