A Taste of the Life Aquatic with Vigon and Ellis
By Leslie Dinaberg, The Santa Barbara Independent
New ‘Aquean’ Exhibition at Santa Barbara Maritime Museum Brings Otherworldly Aspects of the Ocean to Artful Life
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.
“Pisces” by Larry Vigon, ‘Aquean’ exhibit at Santa Barbara Maritime Museum | Photo: Ralph Clevenger