My perceptions of the enormous, awe-inspiring Pre-Columbian adobe structures in the Americas have been coupled with my numerous observations in the Southwestern United States and of present day Peruvians making and using adobes. While traveling throughout Peru for a month in 1996, I saw people making adobes and adobe dwellings, often painted with whitewash, on the outskirts of large cities such as Cuzco and Lima, as well as the inhabitants of small villages making adobes for the adobe houses and walls of the town, such as San Juan de Moro. In fact, throughout the Peruvian coastal regions adobes were being made beside small, scattered adobe houses on roadsides. People were making these adobes by hand, sun-drying them, stacking them and building with them in exactly the same way that they had been doing for a thousand years.
The many impressions of the fabrication and architectural use of sun-dried adobes that I have accumulated during my sojourns in Peru and elsewhere around the world have engaged my artistic imagination. They inspired me to make and use traditional, hand-made, sun-dried adobes, some painted with whitewash, to create a sculpture installation. This installation includes making the adobes and building a structure that symbolizes my impressions and memories, as well as evokes a profound connection to the earth. My site-specific adobe installation entitled: The Adobe Series: Work in Progress-A Wall Fragment With 3 Whitewashed Adobes, was installed permanently for "Earthworks," an invitational exhibition at the Bremer Farm & Galleries, Otego, NY, September 4-19, 1997.