Main Street Landing Moves Gallery to New Home 

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• Sadie Williams
• Tatiana E. Zelazo and Sarah Drexler outside the new Gallery at Main Street Landing.

If you've ever tried to visit the Gallery at Main Street Landing in Burlington, you likely got confused wandering the maze of elevators and hallways in the conference center-like building. No more.

The gallery has moved to the CornerStone Building at 3 Main Street. With a street-level entrance and large windows, the new space is located just behind Mirror Mirror and is not to be confused with the neighboring Art's Alive Gallery at Union Station. The "sustainable redevelopment" company Main Street Landing owns both CornerStone and Union Station, as well as the building at College and Lake streets. The South End Arts and Business Association curates both gallery spaces.

SEABA associate director and curator Sarah Drexler says the gallery was moved because MSL co-owner Melinda Moulton and her daughter, Mariah Riggs, acknowledged that it was too hard to access. (Riggs manages MSL's Performing Arts Center in the Lake and College building.) Additionally, it was difficult for artists to get recognition for their shows. The new site will better serve both MSL's mission and the artists.

"Main Street Landing has been amazing in showcasing artists," Drexler says. "They've been full supporters of the artists, so they decided, when the space opened up [in the CornerStone Building], that it was a good opportunity to move [there]."

The new gallery opens to the public this Friday, June 1, with an exhibition of paintings and photographs of female nudes by Tatiana E. Zelazo that had been on display in the previous venue. Additional video work by Burlington photographer and filmmaker John Douglas is installed in a curtained-off portion of the gallery dedicated to digital media.

Drexler, who curates 11 spaces around Burlington for SEABA, says the focus of this one will be nontraditional and emerging artists.

Zelazo fits in the second category, if not the first. This is her first solo show, points out Drexler, who aims to continue booking solo exhibits for up-and-comers, each paired with digital work in the media nook.

While paintings of the female body are about as traditional as you can get, Zelazo's close-up shots, manipulation of light and shadow, and monochromatic bent make her works more abstract. And they've been popular: Drexler says more than half of the modestly priced works have already sold.

Veteran artist Douglas doesn't fit the newbie bill — he's been exhibiting in the Queen City since the 1980s — but the piece he's showing is new. Drexler is particularly excited about the video work in the new gallery, as she's had few opportunities to showcase that medium elsewhere.

Work by Zelazo and Douglas will be on view at the new Gallery at Main Street Landing through the end of June.