traversingwithonions | or in pursuit of the butter chair and other encounters…
What is a book? Is narrative contingent on physical structure? How does one enter, peruse, or give pause? traversingwithonions | or in pursuit of the butter chair and other encounters… was based on the analogy of the Japanese choreographer Poppo Shiraishi. “Your back is your front,” a meditation, a harkening that questions orientation – one’s interior, one’s exterior. The suspended books can be experienced from the fore edge, opened or “traversed” in multiple ways. The layers form an improvisatory landscape. The eggs vulnerable, balance elusive – an absurd juxtaposition, that can ultimately be experienced viscerally in non-sequential form.
Sondra Graff came to design circuitously through the world of dance with an unanticipated stop at Parsons School of Design. She subsequently received her MFA in graphic design from VCFA, Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work in performance, pedagogy and design have melded into years of formative and collaborative projects. Sondra’s work explores the juxtaposition of the absurd combined with chance, the distressed and the intangible. Her scope moves from micro, creating forms with found objects and the influence of time, to macro, developing larger-scale interdisciplinary endeavors. traversingwithonions, a site-specific piece with 750 lbs of red onions embodies her focus. Sondra is also an Adjunct Associate Professor teaching at FIT in New York City. When she is not designing or teaching, she can be found in the Gunks, at times, dangling from a cliff.
