Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, August 28, 2021: Bruce M. Sherman, an American Postwar & Contemporary artist (#1350)

Saturday, August 28, 2021

Artist of the Day, August 28, 2021: Bruce M. Sherman, an American Postwar & Contemporary artist (#1350)

Bruce M. Sherman (1942) is an American Postwar & Contemporary artist. His work was featured in numerous exhibitions at key galleries and museums.

“When you cut into a tooth, which seems very inert, it’s actually a living thing, as is clay,” ceramic artist Bruce M. Sherman tells. It’s an unlikely talking point for an artist, but not for Sherman, who worked as a dentist for seven years. Today, he uses his scalpel to cut clay, and his artistic practice, ceramics, is thriving.

Sherman’s playful ceramic sculptures—colorful anthropomorphic forms which embody the levity and wit of the artist himself—have been shown multiple times on two continents. His work was the focus of a solo show at Kaufmann Repetto’s Milan gallery, a fair booth with Nicelle Beauchene Gallery at NADA New York, and an exhibition at Beauchene’s Lower East Side gallery.

Sherman’s momentum started building over the past eight years, largely in step with the art world’s increasing enthusiasm for ceramics. It was also fueled in part by the discerning eye of artist and curator Matthew Higgs, who gave Sherman an exhibition at White Columns (which sold out) and a memorable showing at Independent New York.

But long before his newfound fame, Sherman has been working with ceramics steadily for over five decades. “Even when I was a dentist I always had a kiln in my apartment,” he says with a laugh. “For many years it was in my bedroom, which was probably crazy.” He took his first ceramics course 51 years ago at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, during his graduate school dental internship.

Sherman studied dentistry at NYU, though the work left much to be desired. “I didn’t dislike dentistry, but I didn’t get deep satisfaction out of it like my fellow students,” he says, recalling others’ excitement over patient cases and the prospect of performing a root canal. “It’s nice helping people and making beautiful teeth, but there are only 32 of them.”

And so he quit. Sherman left school with few plans, save for a desire to pursue ceramics and other creative avenues like design—one year he launched a line of lucite furniture. For 15 years in the ’60s and ’70s he was involved in the Society for Experimental Studies, a group of likeminded creatives who worked together to pursue and promote various forms of craftsmanship. The high regard for craft that Sherman learned in that circle still largely figures into his practice today.

Today, Sherman keeps a studio in the ground floor of an unassuming walk-up in Midtown Manhattan, a few blocks from the home where he lives with his partner, the art dealer and advisor Rob Teeters. The studio is lined with decades worth of sculpture and pots, from large, wheel-thrown vessels to new work like tables and tall, totem-like figures. Much of his process is therapeutic, he tells me, gesturing to a shelf filled with small creatures made from strips and coils of clay.

Sherman’s pieces are primarily made from slabs of clay that he cuts, stacks, makes into tubes, and combines to form people and mythical creatures. Some resemble dollhouses, inhabited by tiny figures, body parts, ladders, and potted plants—some even hold real, miniature cacti.
He experiments with countless glazes, dousing his figures in myriad popping colors and delectable textures, from deep blue and green tie-dye-like finishes to sprays of speckles and translucent, pastel-colored hues.

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