Here is a sampling of my drawings and sketches from the 2001 Gabriel Prize in Paris, France. The Gabriel Prize is sponsored by the Western European Architecture Foundation. This generous prize supports the graphic study of French classical architecture, sponsoring three months in France spent drawing and painting: essentially analyzing one's subject buildings through graphic means. My interest was in experiencing firsthand a number of 18th-century buildings that Thomas Jefferson deeply admired and that appear in his letters, as well as a few speculations.

The drawing that won me the prize wasn't of a building at all. It was a fifteen-minute pencil sketch of my son Elliott. Jean-Louis Nouvian, my Gabriel Prize advisor in France, also sat on the jury that awarded the prize. Afterward he pulled me aside and told me it was the drawing of my son that won it.