Sculpture in Place

The highly polished stainless steel exteriors of Pepper's ""constructed boxes'' reflect their surrounding environment, yet their inner voids dominate. Her ``urban altars,'' totem-like statues, strive for archetypal significance. Amphisculpture, at AT & T headquarters in New Jersey, features concentric circles of concrete tunneling through the earth, topped by metallic wedges; its meaning is ambiguous. Pepper erects immense columns that resemble modern machine tools or quaint, old-fashioned Italian cast-iron lampposts. One such tower, shaped like a giant drill bit, rises over a piazza in Italy; her painted metal pyramids dot city sidewalks in the U.S. A sculptor with monumental aspirations, whose fashionable work falls into a too-easy symbolism, Pepper is the focus of an exhibit on national tour, of which this album is a tie-in. (November 7)