Artistic renditions of landscapes often capture a single moment: sunrise over the mountains, a storm brewing on the horizon, a crisp first snowfall. But you aren’t likely to see scenes like those at Extra Special With Cheese, a new gallery in Burlington’s Soda Plant. In its current show, “Maintenance Practice,” on view through November 9, Landon Newton instead presents works in which landscapes — and specifically the plants within them — demand ongoing attention.
Newton, who lives and works in Brooklyn, presents a series of 5.5-by-12-inch drawings of plants’ shadows printed as cyanotypes (photographs exposed in sunlight). Squiggly, sketchy white lines against deep blue backgrounds seem organic but abstract. Nearby, visitors can take a copy of the “Score for Two-Handed Shadow Drawings,” a set of instructions — what Fluxus artists of the 1960s called a “score” — for making your own. It describes the prerequisites as “two drawing instruments, eight sheets of paper, a firm drawing surface, a plant, and a sunny day preferably with crisp shadows and a slight breeze.” The score goes on to describe how to sit outside and sketch the plant’s shadow, using both hands at once to “awaken both hemispheres of your brain.”
Another piece, “Maintenance Practice,” features a whorl of actual mown grasses and weeds on the floor beside four 53-inch-tall cyanotypes, made in the field where the grasses were cut. A card offers a list of eight weeds and grasses included in the clippings, which Newton collected over a month at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture in Maine. It’s a record both of the human labor and the real species that make up the landscape, which we might otherwise see as a generic blanket of green.
This kind of work — with an emphasis on the conceptual, experimental and playful — is gaining a foothold at Extra Special With Cheese, located in the “Outer Limits” (second floor) of the Soda Plant. Photographers Mookie Kristensen, 34, and her husband, Corey Riddell, 42, opened the 150-or-so-square-foot project space in May; “Maintenance Practice” is their fourth show.
The pair moved to Burlington from Brooklyn just over a year ago. Kristensen grew up in Sharon, Vt., and Riddell in California. After earning their MFAs from Rhode Island School of Design and Columbia University, respectively, both worked in New York City, Kristensen in administrative roles at galleries and at an artist’s studio and Riddell as an arts fabricator. They came to Burlington with a list of artists they knew and wanted to show, most of them women, many with academic chops or emerging on the national gallery scene.
Having seen even blue-chip artists struggle to display less commercially viable work in New York, the pair aimed to create a small space where artists could try something new without feeling like it needs to make money. The point, Kristensen said, is to show work with the potential to spark conversations. The gallery makes and sells a $10 zine for each show as an accessible entry point for visitors.
Kristensen said she loves Burlington’s selection of record stores, and the pair have found “so much good music” and comedy in the Queen City. They’ve found visual art, too, but not a lot of unconventional work, she said. With Extra Special With Cheese, the couple seek to change that, because venues that incubate work like Newton’s are vital to a strong art scene. It’s important, Kristensen said, to have “spaces that are doing the weird things.”
“Maintenance Practice” by Landon Newton, on view through November 9 at Extra Special with Cheese in Burlington. extraspecialwithcheese.com
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4 2025.
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