Art and Surf Culture Merge at Mollusk Surf Shop

When you walk through the Funk Zone, you can spot a huge mural with a textured orange sun tucked behind a green, minimal ocean panorama. That is the Mollusk Surf Shop, a space that blends retail with a strong connection to art and surf culture. This multi-purpose space supports self-driven artists by showcasing their work in the building’s art gallery. Manager and gallery curator Beau Difiore works to preserve Mollusk’s creative culture by gathering creatives together for group exhibitions. His current exhibition, Pieces from Nearby, features the work of Atlas Klapp, Pecos Pryor, Tao Antrim, Sabrina Difiore, and Diego Melgoza Oceguera, a group of Santa Barbara–based artists devoted to their own craft, including clay sculpture, installation, photography, and conceptual work. Looking beyond this art show, how did Mollusk evolve into a retail store art hub for the community? 

A Brief History of Mollusk

According to Difiore, Mollusk started around 2005 in San Francisco, and was founded by Johanna St. Clair and John McCambridge, two creatives focused on illustration and apparel design. St. Clair and McCambridge saw a connection between surfing and art, from Bay Area artists like Barry McGee and Chris Johanson, who later contributed to Mollusk’s culture through merchandise collaborations and art exhibitions. Since the beginning of Mollusk, art and music have been key parts of the stores and have transcended cities, including the Santa Barbara location, which has been around since 2021.

The Mollusk Santa Barbara location, at 208 Gray Avenue, contributed to the town’s surf history by shaping boards in the 70s. Even today, it continues to share the same initiative as the original San Francisco Mollusk store, as if the building was destined for creativity. Mollusk’s culture brings creative, self-motivated people with different art disciplines into the space. Original craftsmanship is a core value. You can see the custom-made objects, from the abstract bongos on display to art pieces from previous exhibitions lying around the shop, and even a wooden car made by, a carpenter and artist who has collaborated in the space. The gallery has solid construction, with museum-grade drywall that lets artists manifest their vision through flexible artwork displays. 

According to Difiore, placing the gallery inside the retail store creates a contrast between the shop’s commercial aspect and the gallery’s intention to make the space accessible to the community. In the past, he has curated several gallery shows focused on Santa Barbara surfboard archives, exhibitions focusing on the town’s surf history, and other shows in collaboration with camera brands like Leica. Difiore likes collaborating with community-driven, passionate individuals, which is why he said he gathered Klapp, Pryor, Antrim, Sabrina Difiore, and Melgoza for the current exhibition. 

Pieces from Nearby Inspiration 

Pieces from Nearby discusses the various multidisciplinary art objects created by Santa Barbara’s art community. “Nearby” refers to pieces close to the artist, whether they are a friend, art objects, beliefs, or ritual practices. The concept of the show can be taken literally and from each artist’s perspective. Difiore’s intention is to celebrate and support artists from the community who are local or have been based in Santa Barbara for a while; people from nearby. Asked “What inspired you to bring these artists together, and what inspired the exhibition’s title?” Difiore said, “I wanted to bring artists who are doing things to support Santa Barbara’s local art scene. The selection happened organically, and the show self-assembled through talking about collaborations with the artists’ friends and community members.”

The idea for this show also derives from a Mollusk group exhibition that took place in summer 2025 called Making Friends, which featured artists from the East Coast and a few Santa Barbara friends of Difiore. This summer, Difiore wanted to focus on the Santa Barbara arts scene with a similar intention: to bring artists together and expand Mollusk’s collaboration history. In this exhibition, he gathered a fresh group of people who haven’t had the opportunity to show work at the gallery. However, for Pieces of Nearby, Difiore wanted to expand beyond surf-focused artwork and take a contemporary art approach to branch out and make the work more relatable to a broader audience. He said he appreciates the contrast between the contemporary art selection and the surf-inspired art previously exhibited in the S.B. space and at other Mollusk locations. Although the show’s intention differs from previous exhibitions, Pieces From Nearby resonates with Mollusk’s original core intention. 

Art Exhibition and Artists

When approaching the gallery space located in the back right corner of the store, the first thing that catches your eye is Melgoza’s “Watermelon Monarch” butterfly installation on the right-side wall of the gallery: a reference to Mexican immigration symbology (Monarch butterfly) and its similarities to the Gaza Strip’s (watermelon resistance symbol) in regard to borders, surveillance, and oppression. For Melgoza, the title expresses the current brown immigrant experience related to the Santa Barbara ICE raids, as well as the U.S contributions to the Palestinian genocide — both nearby struggles. The construction of the sculptural painting has a similar energy to Mexican artist Maria Assumpció Raventós’ textile pieces. Like Raventós, “Monarch” has a delicate color transition and hangs loosely from its handmade wooden frame. Melgoza also displays two abstract ceramic sculptures underneath the butterfly, which mirror Klapp’s ceramic installation. 

Klapp displays a wall installation with hanging abstract plates and two bases on each side of the playful arrangement. Asked how they connected the artwork to Difiore’s exhibition title, Klapp said, “The way that the work relates is that I use a lot of clay that I source around Santa Barbara. I dig up clay locally, and some of the pieces of the show are clays, slips, and surface materials that I harvest from around the county.”

Klapp’s clay-gathering practice brings new meaning to the exhibition and, in my opinion, is a tribute to the county’s available natural resources and the artist’s personal connection to the land. In this body of work, they wanted to explore new clay textures and throwing techniques, as well as move away from their everyday practice of creating utilitarian ceramic work that hyper-focuses on detail and consistency. The installation work is personal and raw, yet it reflects the everyday objects surrounding life and craft. Klapp documents life abstractly through their drawings, similarly to Antrim’s everyday photo documentation of Santa Barbara life. 

 As you move through the exhibition’s artwork, you’ll encounter two transitional photo layouts of 50 photos each in the corners next to the gallery’s middle wall. This abstract-shaped photo layout, reminiscent of a Tumblr grid, connects the exhibition from artist to artist and balances Klapp’s and Melgoza’s mirroring installations. These are photo documentations of Antrim’s personal life. When asked about the content of the photos, Antrim said some were helping friends build modeling portfolios, and others were skateboarding photos from planned skate sessions. Most of his photography is “organic documentation to remember the good times.” The layout of Antrim’s work, taken over a span of 15 years, reminded me of the raw photo layout of Wolfgang Tillmans in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Similarly, Antrim exhibits his personal life photo documentation without frames, simply bonded to the wall, connecting the exhibition’s artwork.

Sabrina Difiore’s clay ceramics play an important role in the exhibition, as her gum-eucalyptus-tree-inspired bases help bond the space together from artist to artist. As Sabrina would say, her work practice consists of hand-building clay ceramic pieces that test the boundaries of gravity and portray a human-touch aesthetic. Her clay-building technique is spontaneous and allows the sculptural bases to shape themselves organically through wabi-sabi (a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that embraces imperfection). Her work relates to Pieces of Nearby, as she draws inspiration from the flora (flowers and seeds) she sees on her daily dog walks around the Santa Barbara neighborhoods. Her work reflects native and non-native nature, which she mimics in her pieces. Sabrina’s clay work resembles the tactile textures of the artwork of Japanese artist Saijo Akane, who also creates organically shaped clay work. One can see Sabrina’s work at the display table at the entrance of the gallery, right in front of Pryor’s conceptual photo documentation. 

Pryor exhibits a series of photos that measure time through his nearby everyday objects. You can see a pile of coffee grounds collected over three years, a picture frame showcasing broken pencil tips collected over eight years, and other conceptual work representing the measurement of time. According to Pryor, he is interested in common objects and the rituals of everyday life. And coffee is something he and many people enjoy, while drawing is the basis of his art practice; literally, pieces from nearby. In the exhibition, he also displays a self-portrait of when he was 8 years old. In this instance, Pryor shows the photographer (his mother) his collection of rocks during a soccer match. When asked about the photo choice, he said, “One of the roles of the artist is to share the things we all see every day and point out what is worth looking at. The photo represents a rock that is worth looking at.” 

Every artist in the exhibition has a different perspective on what Pieces from Nearby means. The artwork reflects what each artist considers important in their nearby proximity and what is worth sharing in the group exhibition.

Pieces from Nearby is on view through October 10 at Mollusk Surf Shop, 208 Gray Ave. mollusksurfshop.com/santa-barbara