The Road

24 x 18 inches, colored pencil and graphite on paper mounted on panel

I began this piece with the punchline, “To get to the other side.” By starting with the answer rather than the question, I hoped to invert the logic of this famous joke to explore how meaning shifts incrementally and imperceptibly through repetition. The color patterns echo from top to bottom, creating a rhythm that mirrors the recursive structure of the text itself. I thought of the road as a metaphor for phase change, spaces where meaning transforms gradually through subtle variation and accumulation over time. The joke becomes less about humor and more about behavior, language, and iteration: how repetition creates change, how pattern becomes meaning. It’s similar to how listening to a song again and again alters how we feel about it, or how a story retold across generations evolves in tone and meaning. First printed in 1847, this joke continues to mutate; its language remains exactly the same, yet our interpretation shifts with each retelling, shaped by context and cultural change. By the time the original question reappears at the bottom, it is both the end and the beginning, a self-reflective loop where the joke contemplates its own evolution.