A Taste of the Life Aquatic with Vigon and Ellis 

A mesmerizing look at the many artful aspects of the sea, Aquean: Photographs, Paintings, and Prints by David Ellis and Larry Vigon is certainly worth a visit to the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum (SBMM). Currently on view in the upstairs galleries, this multimedia experience begins with an animated exploration of elements of Vigon’s paintings (think fish skeletons and other surreal oceanic imagery) swimming around to music for an effect that’s quite otherworldly and bewitching. 

“I’m really happy with the way everything’s turned out,” said Vigon in an interview before the show’s opening last week. “I don’t know if I can explain it. It’s obviously related to the ocean and the shore, but it’s a whole different take on it. … And also the animation that I had done just blew my mind when I got it back. … It’s quite mesmerizing, I would say. Is that the right word?”

It is indeed the right word for a show that pairs Vigon’s Flotsam & Jetsam — an expansive impression of the sea that includes found objects, paintings, linocuts, large-scale prints, video, and dimensional collages — with Ellis’s Lobospheres: The Lost Souls of Point Lobos — a 20-year exploration that consists of abstract, impressionistic photographs of textures, silhouettes, and mythical figures discovered in the wave-carved rock forms of Point Lobos, California. 

As graphic designer and photographer, respectively, the two artists ran a thriving business together years ago, so it was particularly meaningful for them to be back together at the museum. Vigon’s good friend artist Thomas Van Stein (whose work has been shown at SBMM) got the ball rolling when he saw a show of Ellis’s in Culver City a couple of years ago and showed photos of it to curator Emily Falke. “Then, unbeknownst to me, Thomas showed her my work. And Emily said, ‘Well, what if we do a show with two of these guys.’ So that’s how it started,” said Vigon.

The show’s name, Aquean, is a made-up word that sounds like aqua or aquatic, with just a little twist, not unlike the exhibition itself. Vigon — who built his career at the center of rock history, designing more than 200 iconic album covers for artists including Fleetwood Mac, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Counting Crows, Bonnie Raitt, and Eric Clapton, earning induction into the Album Cover Hall of Fame in 2020 — also designed a special logo for the show.

Ellis also has his roots in the music business, starting as a studio session musician, before a career in photojournalism, eventually moving into environmental and fine art photography. 

The two friends bring their art together to invite the viewer to think of the sea as both a metaphor and subject, reflecting on the delicate balance between permanence and loss along California’s coastlines.

“Aquean is a collaboration that captures the constant movement of the sea as it recreates itself and everything it touches,” said Ellis in a statement about the show. “It expresses the tension between the found beauty and powerful uncertainty of a relentless ecosystem.” 

Aquean: Photographs, Paintings, and Prints by David Ellis and Larry Vigon is on view at Santa Barbara Maritime Museum through July 26. See sbmm.org for more details.