To many critics, it seems strange for Ms. Tramonivic, 72, the legendar

To many critics, it seems strange for Ms. Tramonivic, 72, the legendary print and visual artist who almost singlehandedly brought performance art to the general public and to large venues, to be working on a small off-Broadway dance project.

How should you scan the options horizontally in this case? Remove the appositive modifying Ms. Tramonivic and then try to make sense of the choices given.

To many critics, it seems strange for Ms. Tramonivic, 72, the legendary print and visual artist who almost singlehandedly brought performance art to the general public and to large venues, to be working on a small off-Broadway dance project.


A) for Ms. Tramonivic, 72, the legendary print and visual artist who almost singlehandedly brought performance art to the general public and to large venues, to be working on a small off-Broadway dance project.
This option uses an appositive for the noun - Ms. Tramonovic - and uses 'Seems strange for X to be (do)ing Y'. This is a very good answer choice on the GMAT. Still, you must not mark this without reading other choices as two options might be perfectly correct in terms of both grammar and meaning, however, the GMAT might prefer one over the other.

B) that Ms. Tramonivic, 72, the legendary print and visual artist who almost singlehandedly brought performance art to the general public and large venues, be working on a small off Broadway-dance project.
This option introduces a subjunctive clause even though the sentence doesn't indicate a subjunctive mood in any way. Notice - it seems strange that X...be Y. You can straightaway rule this out.

C) that Ms. Tramonivic, who is 72 and the legendary print and visual artist that almost singlehandedly brought performance art to the general public and large venues, is working on a small off-Broadway dance project.
During the initial scanning, this option should seem fine. Probably not as good as option A but let's still keep this for now.

D) for Ms. Tramonivic, 72, the legendary print and visual artist who almost singlehandedly brought performance art to the general public, to large venues, and to be working on a small off Broadway dance project.
According to the approach we are taking, we are removing the modifier and looking for what comes after the comma. In this case, it is 'and'. This indicates that there is parallelism. If you read the whole sentence, there is no verb for the main subject. Everything after Ms. 'Tramonivic' is removable as it is a modifier. Eliminate.

E) that Ms. Tramonivic, who is 72 and the legendary print and visual artist who almost singlehandedly brought performance art to the general public and large venues, to be working on a small off-Broadway dance project.
That Ms. Tramonivic.. to be working.. With that, we need is as the verb as is the case in option C. Eliminate.

Now, there is a clear 2-3 split. Between A and C, A is better because-
1. Appositives are preferred to regular adjectival modifiers. (,who in option C makes it a regular adjectival modifiers)
2. 'For X to be doing Y' is better than 'that X is Y' because we are talking about something "strange".
3. ..artist 'that'.. in option C is not the correct pronoun. Because an artist is a living person, we cannot use 'that' as a pronoun.

The options had three clues that you could've used to eliminate the wrong answer. Out all three, the third one should be the easiest to spot and the first one should be, relatively, the hardest to spot.