It would be a mistake to expect a linear, logical show from a curator whose bio includes making puppets for the Broadway musical The Addams Family and a stint as head fabricator for a boutique terrarium company. Ben Finer is best known in Vermont as codirector of Kishka Gallery & Library in White River Junction, but in “Non Sequitur,” at the Phoenix in Waterbury, he presents his paintings alongside those of Woodstock artist Tara Wray and Contoocook, N.H., painter Lucy Mink. The latter’s works offer unstable stripes and geometries of wobbly forms that hover vulnerably in a strange palette of pastels and browns. Wray’s include happy abstractions in bright colors with titles such as “Friendly robot (for a child’s room)” and the cartoonish but scary “Dead horse, dead rider,” as well as one pretty realistic (but also scary) picture of her dog Hula on the porch with Halloween decorations. Among Finer’s contributions are slightly blurred abstract forms that seem to pulsate and a couple of fantasy-like representational images featuring people who might be zombies. The show is creepy, memorable and impressively cohesive, far more than its title might suggest.
‘Non Sequitur: Ben Finer, Tara Wray, Lucy Mink’ Through June 26 at the Phoenix in Waterbury.
This article appears in May 13 • 2026.
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