The Funny Thing Is... is my final MFA Thesis book at Cranbrook Academy of Art. The book compiled highlights from the past two years of my MFA work. In addition, I created a new body of work which experimented with the format and strategies for including type and text. The fragments of typography were culled from scraps I have been saving for thirty years in dozens of notebooks. Many of these pages are riddled with holes and missing letters, having pilfered bits and pieces for design projects through the years. The incoherence that results suggests ways we overhear conversations, and how we wade through a confusion of conflicting texts, not unlike many of the images I made at school.

The Funny Thing Is... includes several inserts. “Men’s Thrill” is documented on this site as a separate project. Another, “The Room Keeps Moving” is printed on newsprint and includes details of images for an installation on campus. Finally, a number of pages are hand-punched with grids of holes through which the phrase “The funny thing is...” appears amid images of smoke. The inability of the architectural grid system to hold back the billowing amorphous clouds creates a hint of unease.