Sonder Is a New Kind of Art Show



Sarah Edwards knows beautiful things can be born out of pain. In fact, that’s why she started painting in the first place.

“I had a really hard year,” Edwards, the CEO of creative marketing studio Some Great People and Fashion Week MN, says. “There wasn’t a lot of joy. And I’ve always loved art, but I haven’t prioritized it, and this year I just started painting again. It turned out to be this great form of therapy I wasn’t expecting.”

Eventually, her loft filled with gigantic pieces of wall art—and clothing made with fabric she had printed with her own designs. She knew she wanted to host an art show, but she didn’t want it to be all about her.

“My entire career has been about promoting other artists and creatives and designers,” she says.

The art show, Sonder, grew into a multidisciplinary gathering of creatives at The Chambers Hotel in downtown Minneapolis—opera performers in the penthouse, ballet dancers serving cocktails, QR codes with hidden messages embedded into paintings. It includes some local artists who have never shown their work before. More than 20 artists, including Edwards herself, will showcase aspects of their work in creative, interactive ways, all throughout the hotel’s halls and rooms for an Alice in Wonderland–esque, food-and-cocktails-laced journey.

The name originates from a book of made-up terms author John Koenig wrote to define certain indescribable emotions, published in his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows—the realization that “everyone is the main character in their own story,” each living their own complex life, a concept that Edwards has been thinking about a lot lately. “It’s this idea that you could be, you know, at the grocery store, and someone standing next to you could be on the verge of a breakdown and you’d have no idea,” she says. “Or maybe they’re having the best day of their life. Or their mind is running a million miles an hour. It blows my mind how complex the human experience is and how we’re swirling around as behind-the-scenes characters in each other’s lives.”

Through the event, Edwards and her team strive to bring those behind-the-scenes characters to the foreground—to connect others not just to the artists of the Twin Cities, but to each other, and to bring a little light to a dark, freezing time of year.

“I want people to be able to get a little weird,” she says. “Here’s the thing—we go to our jobs every day, put on a little show, get our job done, go home, have a life. What about a night where we can enjoy our authentic selves, maybe wear something we don’t usually wear, connect with the community, and appreciate our differences.”

Want to get weird? Tickets for Sonder start at $50 and are available here. Check out the event 5–10 p.m. Saturday, February 4 at The Chambers Hotel, 901 Hennepin Ave., Mpls., somegreatpeople.com/sonder

February 2, 2023

12:52 PM





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