SHIP/SHAPE

January 25, 2025 - May 4, 2025 | Fort Gallery

Page Laughlin, Flags at Sea, oil on Arches L’Huile, 2023, 51 ½ x 41 ¼ in. 

SHIP/SHAPE is a dynamic exhibition featuring more than 20 paintings and sculptures, from painter Page Laughlin and sculptor David Finn, that explore and delight the various manifestations of ships as image, symbol and metaphor. The exhibition showcases two distinct, but interrelated, bodies of work presented side by side. Although at first glance the two artists’ work might appear radically different—in medium, use of color, physicality—on closer examination strong parallels emerge. This marks the first time in over 30 years that the two artists, who are a couple, have developed an exhibition together.

About the Artists:

David Finn has held more than 15 solo exhibitions, with shows in New York, London, Milan, Hong Kong, and Lund, Sweden. Finn has created art projects for the public throughout the United States. He has received numerous fellowships including grants from the Bemis Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. He recently retired as a Professor of Art at Wake Forest University, where he taught sculpture since 1987. His work in this exhibition stems from a 2022 residency at Sculpture Space in Utica, N.Y.

Page Laughlin’s artwork has been selected for over 43 competitive exhibitions, including 11 museum exhibitions, 10 solo exhibitions or installations, and six published color exhibition cataloques. Her residency fellowships include the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Calif.; the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in Amherst, Va.; and the ON::View Residency in Savannah, Ga. Her work is in numerous private and public collections throughout the United States, including the American University Museum at the Katzen Art Center in Washington, D.C. and the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, N.C. In 2021, Laughlin retired from teaching to focus on her creative activities and is now a research professor at Wake Forest University.