By David Rogers. BLOWING ROCK, N.C. — We have often heard the phrase “… two ships passing in the night…”, but how about two married artists on ships journeying along parallel paths?

That’s what we have at the Blowing Rock Art & History Museum, an exhibit of married couple David Finn and Page Laughlin, a sculptor and a painter, differently exploring nautical themes.

It is at once a curious, creative, innovative, and thought-provoking exhibit entitled, “Ship/Shape,” and for Blowing Rock News it got even more intriguing after sitting down and talking with the two artists. The exhibit opens Jan. 25 and runs through May 4, 2025.

Her Most Recent Theme: Sailing Vessels

Laughlin got this parallel “maritime” journey started after moving on from 8- to 10-year explorations of overlooked interiors and then figurative pieces focused on young women transitioning “… from being carried to carrying.”

She said her work in the Ship/Shape exhibit represents about the last three years of her work.

It was my trigger to start exploring the theme.

“I tend to work on a theme over a period of several years,” she said in describing her art and its focus. “I am inspired by symbols and pictures that surround us. Often, I gravitate toward things we tend to overlook.”

One day, some old photographs of historic sailing ships seized her attention.

“I just love the sailing ship image,” Laughlin recalled. “Once I was attracted to the image, there was that feeling of obsession. It was my trigger to start exploring the theme. In doing so, I started to find ships everywhere. I have over 400 photographs of ships I found in junk shops, on liquor bottles, on Netflix, images on playgrounds…

“The historic sailing ship has a sort of nostalgic quality,” she said.  “The almost obsolete image of a sailing boat is used a lot, but it is still somewhat overlooked. For me, that is the reason to start looking more. My way of looking at a theme is to paint, to explore it through the process of painting, to try and come to some kind of understanding of it.”

I don’t think artwork should be didactic. One answer is not the right way to look at a piece.

Laughlin is also drawn to language and with more than a little curiosity she realized that “ship” is used generously in the English language.

“All of a sudden I started thinking about friendship, fellowship, citizenship, ownership, censorship…,” she noted.

And just like that, her audience might come up with other language associations incorporating “ship” in the word combination: shipwreck, steamship, leadership, ambassadorship, ridership, spaceship, upmanship, bipartisanship, apprenticeship, proprietorship, outdoorsmanship, horsemanship, sportsmanship, championship, gamesmanship, swordsmanship, relationship… the possibilities are endless. The Britannica Dictionary suggests that when “ship” is used as a suffix, the word becomes a noun, indicating a state or condition of something, such as friendship, or a reflection of status, position or duties of something, i.e. dictatorship.

“It is a metaphor for life,” said Laughlin. “It may sound corny, but it tends to be really true.”

For Laughlin, good artwork leaves open a whole world of possibilities for interpretation and meaning.

“I don’t think artwork should be didactic, or that one answer is the right way to look at a piece,” said the veteran artist. “For me, painting should be about objects that you look at and then come back and look at again and again. They become objects of contemplation.

“I try to construct paintings that have enough visual interest — or visual pleasure — that you want to look again,” she added. “And every time you do, hopefully some kind of association will spring up for the viewer. That association may be very different from the association that I had in mind as I was making it. Often there are clues within the paintings, perhaps color choice, titles (I like to play around with puns). But what I am thinking is not the most important thing. What is most important is that I create something that an audience wants to look at and that an audience brings a shared feeling to, bringing their own association. There is an inclusive aspect.”

Laughlin grew up in Richmond, Va., and went to the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar, which provided a great deal of flexibility in her academic studies. After obtaining her undergraduate degree, she studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design.

“Serving as a T.A. (teaching assistant) in grad school,” Laughlin recalled, “I learned that I like to teach. And that was great to find out because it allowed me to make the work I wanted to make, with the commercial pressure.”

It is a tremendous privilege to be an artist and spend one’s time that way… Painting is the way I get to look at and think about the world in a concentrated and intense way.

Laughlin said in her last semester at UVA she took a general art survey course.

“We had to do a project and I decided to paint. I don’t know why, but looking back with tremendous hindsight, I realize that as a teeny-tiny kid my father would paint in our attic, for fun, with oil paint. I think I gravitated toward that because the smell, at least, was familiar. It is a very challenging medium — and I like the challenge.”

For Laughlin, there is a certain sense of responsibility in being an artist.

“It is a tremendous privilege to be an artist and spend one’s time that way. It is a flat-out privilege and I don’t mean that in an elitist way. To be able to investigate the world for yourself, by whatever means. Some people might do that through photography, others through writing. Some people meditate. Some people do athletics. Some people go to church. For me, painting is the way I get to look at and think about the world in a concentrated and intense way.”

Influenced by the Influencer?

Laughlin and Finn have been married for 30-some years, but Finn came into Laughlin’s life a bit earlier. She was part of a Wake Forest committee decision to hire him, to teach at the university. So they met on the job and things took their natural course.

Asked why he started his theme sculpting ships, Finn didn’t hesitate to respond with a wry smile.

“That’s easy. Every night I was around this artist who was painting ships. Every night she had a new ship!”

Chuckling, he added, “That is one of my inspirations. Obviously, with these freighters in my sculptures I did not try to reproduce what she is doing with sailing vessels, but Page was there first with this nautical theme. Once I saw her ships I was intrigued. I loved drawing ships as a kid and I dug through boxes and found one I did at 12 years old. The ones I drew back then are very similar to the ones I am doing now. They were classic freighter ships, not at all like the much bigger container ships today.”

They are trying to figure out who owns the ship — even if all of the people on board look Russian.

Sculpture is not Finn’s only art form, but right now he is a sculptor focused on freighters. He doesn’t create models of real ships, but they are modeled out of his imagination, somewhat along the lines of the smaller freighters from the 1950s and 1960s that he recalled from his youth.

“I don’t have a nautical background,” Finn said. “I am not trying to reproduce any kind of ship that exists. What interests me is getting this kind of feeling about how ships are being used. Like, how they are used by pirates or used in the gray areas of commerce on the high seas. Those are the kinds of things I am interested in revealing, in the ships that I am making.”

That “gray area” is especially thought-provoking.

“Almost 17% of the commercial transport is in the gray fleet, which are ships that are flagged but not necessarily the owners,” Finn explained. “The countries that flag those ships may not even know who the owners are. Take the Cook Islands, for example. Their flag is on the ship that recently was accused of cutting a cable that runs between Finland and Estonia. They are trying to figure out who owns the ship — even when all of the people on board look Russian.”

How does the “gray” subject get translated into his ship sculptures?

“There are things going on, on the deck of each of my ships,” said Finn. “Some have arms or armaments on them. What look like missiles are actually made with sticks from my back yard!

“On one of the ships there are two plays being enacted. One of the plays is ‘Waiting for Gadot’, Samuel Beckett’s play about two characters engaged in a variety of discussions while waiting for the title character to arrive, but he never does. The play is being enacted maybe by sailors or people trapped on that ship,” said Finn.

People actually making real ships have plans for everything, every detail. I have a different purpose.

“There is another ship with people coming up a plank, all carrying suitcases. I don’t have a specific idea about what that ship is about, but we know that many ships are involved in migration or transporting people. There are some fishing vessels that take people on, people who come to work and then never leave.”

One of his sculptures is very much unlike any of the others. At first glance, it looks like it is wrapped in a black cover, waiting to be unpacked for display.

But that is actually the final work. It is Finn’s depiction of “special operations,” perhaps military. Fittingly, he describes it as “Black Ops.”

“The thing that gets me about art is that it excites me. What excites me about art is seeing the world in a new way. I have never seen anything like these ships before. They are different. I was inspired by artists of the past who may have been a little bit similar.”

How long does it take to do a ship?

“When I start out I have sketches and maybe some kind of an idea of what I am going for,” he shared, pensively, before suddenly turning serious. “People actually making real ships have plans for everything, every detail. I have a different purpose. I am trying to get to this exciting place where it reveals something new to me. I am feeling my way. I may do one thing, then correct it, maybe over and over again. It takes a long time because I don’t know from the start really what I am going for.”

For most of the materials, he uses wood.

“I am familiar with using tools, so I use band saws, chisels and all,” he said. “These ships are all made from an ash tree that was on my property. Most of the time, hardwoods are more conducive to making these small pieces. They last. Then there is the tar, a kind of very thick kind of paint.”

Like Laughlin, Finn didn’t start out with an interest in art.

“I grew up in Ithaca, New York. After high school, I went to Cornell University, then the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. I was an artist in New York for about 10 years. I taught at UNC-Chapel Hill for one year, then Wake Forest. I retired from teaching last year. Earlier, I had jobs like a lot of young people. I was a stone mason, a short order cook, a number of things,” he recalled.

Like his early jobs, Finn said he has multiple interests when it comes to art.

“I constantly seek out different materials and different mediums to work in, depending on what I want to do. I went up to Vermont, for instance, to learn how to carve marble. I wanted to make shoes that were made out of marble, that would be remnants of statuary. I am not solely focused on ships. I can’t tell when I am going to stop, but I am into ships right now. But I am into a number of different things.”

Laughlin said they seem to work on project-based art.

“David has worked on everything from trash to marble to wood… you name it, ” said Laughlin. “I have done public artwork that is not painting at all. I think it may be somewhat more typical of contemporary artists, to move with an idea.”

Finn explained some of the complexities of switching mediums or art forms.

“How much time do you have? How much time does it take to master a different technique? Then, how much time will it take to thoroughly explore a subject, like in this case, ships? There is no right answer to those questions, but those things are always on my mind. To switch into something else is almost like a research project. You’re not sure when you are going to get to the end of it.”

Whatever the medium, whatever the art, one thing is certain for Finn and Laughlin: they have a new appreciation for Blowing Rock.

“After the museum contacted us and we came up to look at the exhibit space, we were blown away by what we found here at BRAHM. Everything about this museum is very special, from not just the facility but also the incredible, collaborative teamwork. This institution is a hidden gem, at least it was hidden to us. Blowing Rock… there is amazing nature. It is an amazing town. And there is amazing art and culture,” said Laughlin.