Rafael Esparza with his hands in the mud.

On an overcast day in January, I made my way to the LA River adjacent Bowtie Project where Rafael Esparza and his crew were getting ready to mold one of the early batches of adobe bricks for his latest installation that will be part of the Whitney Biennial. He loan me his pair of Nike Cortez so I wouldn't get my new Adidas dirty. I rode in the back of a pick-up truck to gather buckets of water from the LA River and watched as dirt/water and hay, molded by wood, were transformed into bricks by the crew.

Production was cut short due to rain but they went on to make over 3,000 adobe bricks that all got shipped to New York for the show. This grand task was completed with the help of Esparza's friends and supporters that volunteered assistance over a period of a couple months.

I put my palm on one of the bricks to infuse it with my energy. On that night a lone coyote decided to do the same thing and placed his paw print on a few.

Here is a complete slideshow of that day in photos.