[drums and synthesizer play in bright rhythm] ♪ ♪ (Jon Reischl) Objectively I'm trying to portray the process of thought and all of the stuff that goes on in your head when you think about things.

Like for example, if I were to say your mother's name, you might picture your mother's face, but you're also going to include all this other information about her-- what her hair looked like at any given time; her favorite clothes, the way that she smells-- not even all visual information-- the way her voice sounded.

That's just the stuff that's specific to her.

There's also going to be all this other analogous data that just comes with that simple suggestion.

What I'm really trying to do visually is at least address all of that activity that's going on in our mind.

I share my studio with 3 other artists in an old mattress factory in St.

Paul.

I went to college at the College of Visual Arts in St.

Paul where I was an illustration major.

Once I graduated from college, I didn't really want to go down that path of being a full-time illustrator, but I still wanted to paint and still wanted to create images.

One of the artists that I was really taken by was Robert Rauschenberg, who's very famous for his assemblage works--he'd use a lot of layered imagery, but combined it all in a very weird, confusing way, and I was very taken with that.

A mixed-media painter would be someone who uses different mediums all together.

I use acrylic and ink and elements of collage and photography, all together in the same space.

I begin typically by assembling some images, generally start with photography-- stuff that I've shot or stuff that I've collected.

On the computer I'll combine it, working with, you know, opacity and layers and multiplying layers and overlays, two ways that I think are interesting structurally and compositionally.

I typically don't really think about what the images are going to have in common with one another, but I am usually looking for a few different general types that I'll want to combine together.

I think Tom Waits once said something to the effect of how all you needed to write a song is the name of a girl, the make and model of a car, and a town.

And similarly I'll typically start with some sort of figure, something industrial and maybe something in between there also.

And when I have something that I'm happy with, I'll have that output onto a larger piece of paper.

Usually a 24 by 30 inches is what I can get away with, print it on a laser printer, then use a gel medium to coat that paper with.

Since the image is actually printed with a laser printer, it uses toner, which transfers nicely from the paper to the gel.

The gel, it doesn't seep into the fibers of the paper.

The toner, unlike ink, which actually stains the paper, the toner rests on top of it, and so the gel is able to pull as much of it as possible from the paper.

The idea is to get this as thin as possible, as much of that supporting paper off of it as possible.

We do this by soaking the image in water for 15 to 20 minutes, get it really saturated, then we'll pull it out and flip it over and just, with our hands just start rolling the paper off.

I'm using the brush to pick up some of the thinner layers of paper that my fingertips can't quite get.

So after I've removed all of the excess paper, I'm left with the image imprinted onto this sheet of gel.

And after both sides are dry, then I will be able to mount it to the wood or canvas; in this case we're going to use wood.

Basically, it's a glue like polymer.

It's used a lot in bookbinding, it's a real nice solid adhesive.

It doesn't bubble up.

After I press this for a certain period of time, and it cures, I will be able to paint on it.

One of things I like about the process is that it is degradative in that you lose a lot of definition as the process goes on and then ultimately, you are taking what you have left over and creating something kind of new, but still related to its source, which I think mimics the thought process.

I want people to feel comfortable interacting with my pieces.

I've gone out of my way to invite people touching them in the past.

I had done pieces that had an actual moving spindle that they had to touch, and that was actually one of the challenges showing that work, was getting people to break through that wall.

Actually I would have to walk by and spin it in front of people before they'd be like, "Oh," and they would do it themselves.

It's just one of those things that we're so well-trained to keep distance, which is great when you're dealing with stuff that's hundreds of years old that's necessary, but I think it's building up an unnecessary wall.

Working with this process and thinking so much about how I think, I don't think it's changed the way that I think, but it's changed the way that I think about how I think, if that makes sense.

We don't spend a lot of time sitting around and thinking about the way that we think.

It's just unnatural and confusing, but when I do try to do that now, it looks like these images that I'm creating and I think that is to me more because I've now established that in my mind, as oh, this is what this looks like, so when I need to call up an image of me thinking, I have one.