Jim Phillips

Jim Phillips has spent most of his life making things—paintings, photographs, schools, buildings, gathering places, books, and occasionally trouble.

An artist since the 1960s, he has worked in portraiture, charcoal, photography, digital art, folk-art construction, writing, and whatever else seemed necessary at the time. He holds a Master’s degree in Education and spent much of his professional life creating and running schools built around art, culture, curiosity, and the radical notion that people learn better when they are interested in what they are doing.

He has also served as an evaluator for Louisiana’s Gifted and Talented Arts programs in visual art, theatre, and music.

As a young man, Jim taught Hatha Yoga in Columbia, Missouri, and Montreal, Canada, and traveled throughout India—experiences that began a lifelong curiosity about spirituality, storytelling, breathing, consciousness, and the considerable distance between what human beings believe and what they actually know.

Eventually he found his way to South Louisiana.

There, Jim and his partner, Christy Leichty, created The Whirlybird, an improbable rural gathering place where musicians, artists, writers, cooks, teachers, travelers, neighbors, and assorted restless spirits have been finding one another for more than twenty years.

That world has increasingly shaped his writing: South Louisiana, oral storytelling, music, memory, spiritual seeking, folk culture, humor, contradiction, and the strange things that happen when people are given enough room to discover one another.

His books include Golden Years Deep Breaths: Oxygen’s Power for Seniors, The Herbal Tea Bible: Ancient Secrets for Modern Healing, and Whispers from the Bayou: Southern Gothic Adventures, a book that took approximately thirty-six years to finish and may therefore represent either persistence or a serious problem with deadlines.

Jim sometimes writes as Nicky Butler—a name borrowed from his mother’s maiden name and a favorite childhood pet. Nicky has since developed opinions of his own and can occasionally be heard reporting for WBRD 1008 AM — Radio for the Restless Spirit.

Jim lives and works somewhere in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana.

He remains strongly interested in art, stories, cultural traditions, beneficial accidents, and sustainable practices—

especially fun.

P.S. Thanks to Whispers, there is now a very old Catahoula named Bob to deal with.