I photograph highly abstracted imagery created by caustic optics (the patterns light makes when it’s refracted and reflected through a transparent medium—for my purposes, warped glass). I look for compositions, forms and colours that have vitality and might be read as objects, scenes or symbols. From this first stage of subjective pattern-seeking, I then use the print photographs of the images like an invented language for turning text passages into visual “paragraphs.” In this dual process of plucking abstract images from a simple source and assigning them value akin to words, gestures and marks, I explore the power and play in using visual means to communicate emotional and intellectual meaning of written language.