“An artist is a sort of emotional or spiritual historian. His role is to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are. He has to tell, because nobody else in the world tell, what it is like to be alive. All I’ve ever wanted to do is tell that, I’m not trying to solve anybody’s problems, not even my own. I’m just trying to outline what the problems are. I want to be stretched, shook up, to overreach myself, and to make you feel that way too.”
– James Baldwin
Jarrel Phillips, Artist & Educator.
B.A in Child and Adolescent Development: Youth Work & Out of School Time
20+ years of youth work experience from SF – East Africa
Jarrel Phillips is an educator and visual storyteller utilizing mixed media to tell, preserve, and connect our stories across the globe. His mediums include journalism, photography, film, performance, and writing and through them Phillips explores the world through a sociocultural context. A lot of his work explores the African diaspora and its global
presence and influence.
Phillips’s work emphasizes ‘living folklore’. He defines ‘living folklore’ like so: the unfolding and continued cultivation of our lived experience, from the past to the present, through our community history. This includes traditions, stories, customs, beliefs and myths. He explores the important role stories play in our lives, pulling from his very own life experiences as an SF native and world traveler.
Phillips believes our individual and collective stories can build bridges across cultures and communities and spark dialogue that inspires personal and collective growth and transformation.
