The Lost Posters of Surf Artist Rick Sharp
Rick Sharp and a pair of sharp ladies! Photo: Bissell
The Artwork of Legend Rick Sharp
It’s been almost forty years since surf-poster-artist Rick Sharp was in the midst of creating a decade’s worth of his back-to-nature art. His whimsical, storybook-styled pen and ink drawings became banners for a new generation of nature lovers and reflected an art form that was born and flourished in Santa Barbara during the seventies.
On display at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum is a collection of Sharp’s early surf posters; starting with the Artist’s first Channel Islands Surfboards poster. We are told some of Sharp’s posters for Channel Islands Surfboards are still yet to surface and his original logo, the oval shaped pen and ink of the Channel Islands, which is still in use today on surfboards — is missing from the display. Of note is a Channel Islands Surfboards calendar which shows the first use of the hexagon logo (albeit small and in one corner of the poster) which would later become an international symbol for the most popular surfboards in the world. Also noteworthy is a circular poster done for one of Santa Barbara’s earliest surf shops, “Surf N’ Wear,” which is still being produced by The Beach House as a t-shirt design.
The show opens April 28 with the Sea Festival and will be on display through May 1, 2015. See more of Rick’s work by visiting www.RickSharp.com
Rick still stylin’ at Rincon after all these years… Photo: Bissell
» wrote on 05.06.12 @ 02:30 PM
Rick Sharp is more than you could ever dream up for a movie on what life in Santa Barbara should REALLY be like. He’s a artist, song writer and musician, inventor, photographer, entrepreneur, A+ surfer who never talks about it, and a best friend to so many locals over the years you could not calculate them all. He lives the life he loves and he loves the life he lives. If you spot him on the street, say hi, you will probably have mutual friends. And he knows where all the bodies are buried in “The Barb.” He IS the “True Mayor” of SB.
» wrote on 07.25.12 @ 03:57 AM
My children surf in the sumemr and snowboard in the winter. I like watching the surfing better. My youngest, the more fanatical surfer, started surfing when he was 7. He took lessons from a friend who took him out in the Diamond Head area. He got hooked right away. I have to tell him about your HB being a surf craftsman. He (my son) will be impressed with him going to Indo too.Annie, I am visualizing the scenario of the two groups on the news.
» wrote on 01.17.13 @ 10:13 AM
Rick Sharp! A piece of Santa Barbara history!
