William King's Sculptures at the Lyceum Gallery in Riverhead THE lanky, 6-foot fellow depicted in "Honeymoon," one of the works in a show by the sculptor William King here, is made mostly of pieced-together aluminum, but with his clasped hands and toothy grin, he seems practically tremulous with joy. "Eagerness" is the word Mr. King used recently to describe the feeling he intended to convey in the 1990 work. "Nervous, uncertain - he's feeling all kinds of emotions," the sculptor added. Mr. King, who recently turned 87, had come from his home in East Hampton for a walk-through of the exhibition "William King: Inside the Artist's Studio." The show runs through April 6 at the Lyceum Gallery, in the Montaukett Learning Resource Center on the Eastern Campus of Suffolk County Community College. (An artist's reception, open to the public, will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday.) With more than 20 sculptures, the exhibition emphasizes the flattened figures - witty, gestural, stilt-legged - that have become signature works of a long career. Writing in The New York Times in 2007, Holland Cotter called Mr. King's sculpture "comical-tragical-maniacal." The artist's own take: "Misery loves comedy," he says, punning, in a short video running with the exhibition. Misery and comedy seem evident in "Mayday," depicting a man with his hands cupped to his mouth in mid-yell. "Mayday" (named for the international distress signal), which stands near "Honeymoon" in the show, was also made in 1990, of shapes sawed from aluminum plate and riveted together. Mr. King even sewed their red-velvet clothing - shorts for "Mayday," trousers for "Honeymoon" - as he did for numerous other works in the show. On the lawn outside the Montaukett Center stand two large sculptures, "Salsa," a graceful duo, and "Kontest," a pair of battling stilt-men; they, of course, wear only their coating of red paint. To the show's co-curators, Beth Giles and Margery Gosnell-Qua, both adjunct assistant professors of visual arts at the college, such works seemed especially apt for the Montaukett Center, which opened in March 2011. Its Lyceum Gallery, with high ceilings and open space, "lends itself particularly to large-scale sculpture," said Ms. Giles, who lives in Sag Harbor and has known Mr. King since the 1980s. He started spending summers in East Hampton in 1959 and moved permanently to the township's Northwest Woods area in 1975. Ms. Giles and Ms. Gosnell-Qua, the gallery coordinator, were also looking for art that was immediately engaging. "We wanted work that appeals to the students," Ms. Giles said. With Mr. King a natural on both counts, they visited his studio. Viewing the sculptures "was really like being in a crowd - a very colorful crowd," Ms. Gosnell-Qua recalled. It seemed like they were talking to each other, even showing off to each other. So they do, as well, at the Lyceum Gallery: Here, a bevy of business types in suit and tie huddles together; there, a sandblasted-aluminum likeness of Shakespeare unfurls a folio, while, nearby, a carved-pine Paganini fiddles. Elsewhere, an 18-inch-high woman punches a fellow who has gotten fresh with her. A circus performer dexterously holds another aloft. "It's supposed to look easy - nothing to it," Mr. King said of the circus act. His own work, meanwhile, involves continuing struggle. "It's a desperate activity; it fights back," he said. It's never easy. But it seems so important, somehow. Currently, Mr. King said, "I've got some balsam-wood figures I'm working on. Most of them are three or four feet. He works on each of his figures, he said, until "it says, stop, before you ruin it." Mr. King's fascination with sculpture emerged while he was growing up in Coconut Grove, an enclave of Miami. At age 4 or 5, "I started sculpting by whittling coral rock in the backyard," he said. I used a screwdriver for a chisel and a claw hammer for a mallet. Even then, he said, "it was just a pleasure to hammer away and make shapes." Engineering briefly seemed a career path, but he dropped out of the University of Florida in 1944, when it became clear his future lay somewhere else. When he was thinking of heading to New York, Mr. King recalled, "my mother said: "Here's a hundred dollars. Now get out of this state and don't come back till you're 65. There's nothing here for you." " (Their close relationship is portrayed in "Mama's Boy," an 18-inch sculpture of galvanized iron in the show.) In New York, Mr. King attended Cooper Union; soon, his work was being displayed in galleries. Some wound up in various museums, including the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington and the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He held to his figural approach (in various mediums) against the tide of styles like the Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s. "It was brand new, and it wouldn't be stopped, and it was exciting - I never understood it," Mr. King said, in his laconic way. His wife, the painter Connie Fox, has opened his eyes about abstract art, he added. By now, Mr. King has dozens of solo shows, group exhibitions and public commissions to his credit. Yet, exhibitions of his work still give him a thrill. "Need it, got to have it," he said. It's like vitamins. Even after more than 60 years of making art, Mr. King said, "You've got to be discovered." "William King: Inside the Artist's Studio" is on view through April 6 at the Lyceum Gallery in the Montaukett Learning Resource Center, Eastern Campus, Suffolk County Community College, 121 Speonk-Riverhead Road, Riverhead. Information: sunysuffolk.edu; (631) 548-2536.