When Dartmouth sculptor Chris Gustin creates his pieces, he likes to see where they take him, letting the artwork “lead itself.”

Now several of his pieces are on display in the Donzella LTD gallery in New York City where they will stay through June 5.

After moving to Dartmouth nearly 45 years ago and establishing his own studio, Gustin built his own outdoor kiln, which sculptors from across the country have used for the past 30 years.

“When you've been here [in Dartmouth] for a long period of time, and you have that in your in your DNA, You can't help but bring it in the studio,” he said.

Gustin began his artistic journey in the ‘60s when he started working with clay in high school.

He then worked in one of his dad’s ceramic factories, but after a few years he decided he didn’t want to go into manufacturing — he wanted to create handmade pieces.

Gustin has now shown his sculptures worldwide, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, but this is the first time he’s in a gallery designed in what he calls a “lightbox art” format.

He said that Donzella arranges pieces in an intended fashion to best show-off the sculptures, calling Donzella “kind of a genius.”

“Everything’s talking to each other,” he said.

Gustin explained that he had grown accustomed to the white-walled show rooms where pieces were simply displayed on pedestals.

“For me it was a big move because Paul’s in the design world,” he said.

Gustin, who said he makes pieces people can live with, explained that the way his pieces will be displayed at Donzella LTD will help viewers understand how his sculptures could fit in their homes.

“My work’s about the touch — it’s about the hand,” he said. “The work is successful if you want to reach out and touch it.”

While Gustin creates drawings and doodles before he begins a new sculpture series, when he starts molding his pieces he lets his work dictate the form it will take.

“I’m very much in the moment when I build,” he said.

The pieces Gustin is showing in New York are part of his body of work entitled “Spirit Series,” which features sculptures that are “very figurative-related.”

“They swell and they have bellies, some of them feel kind of pregnant,” he said. “It’s like the sense of the interior is kind of pushing out.”

Gustin said he hopes that when people walk through his gallery they feel “surrounded by this kind of metaphor that you can’t name yet.”

He added, “They’ll name it, but it’s a process, and it’s a felt experience, and it’s physical.”

Gustin often references the human body in his sculptures, including curves, swells, dimples and things that reference skin, muscles and bodies.

He explained that it’s “essential” to the work he makes, which he said is “very visceral.”

“It’s work that’s meant to be felt emotionally, not felt intellectually,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that intellect doesn’t come out of it — it just means that the first grab is something that is coming from the gut rather than the brain.”