Bruce Sherman-Eyes and hands are particularly frequent among his figurative sculptures. “The eye has a lot to do with being aware of oneself and seeing; I’m hoping to tell a story visually rather than be didactic,” he says. He gestures to a figure with a tiny pair of eyeglasses and a cap covered in eyes, a sculpture he describes as a scholar, deep in thought. The hands, he says, stress the importance of prayer. “Working in clay is almost like a way of praying.”

This is evidenced by Sherman’s take on the mythological goddesses The Three Graces, which sees a trio of sculptures of cleaning ladies (one holds a small broom, two have tiny spray bottles). Or a past series, for which he created ceramic pieces inspired by the works of Jean Arp, and attached them to gold poles and stones. “Arp is very elevated,” he says, “my idea was to bring it down to Earth, so it’s ‘Arp on a Rock.’”