His sculptures morphed yet again after he moved to his Williamsburg studio in 1989. He became enamored by huge boulders that had been unearthed at a nearby construction site, so he bought a forklift and filled his studio with them. One afternoon, he invited a few construction workers inside for lunch and was intrigued by their instinctive attraction to the boulders and how they positioned themselves on and around them. He then began introducing the boulders into his sculptures, experimenting further with formal relationships between figures and, of course, the primal human connection to stone.

Above all, it is the universality of the human experience that Vaadia seeks to distill in his art. His anonymous, featureless beings exude a serene timelessness evocative of ancient Egyptian and pre-Columbian sculpture, which Vaadia cites among his inspirations, along with such sculptors as Michelangelo, Auguste Rodin, Isamu Noguchi and Henry Moore, all of whom he credits with advancing the figural tradition through innovative explorations of form and media. Yet despite the reassuring solidity, his figures paradoxically evoke impermanence, forcing us to contemplate the awesome disparity between the human life span and the enduring quality of stone. And despite all their ancient associations, they are undeniably contemporary, recalling three-dimensional computer imagery, the cross-sections of a CAT scan or the futuristic people depicted on public signage.

Although Vaadia’s exploration of the human figure may ally him with such sculptors as Kiki Smith, Jonathan Borofsky, Tony Cragg and Antony Gormley, he occupies a category of his own, beyond purely conceptual and representational idioms. Staying true to his own quest for expansion while pushing the boundaries of his medium, his latest works are a series of layered slate and bluestone busts that are hazily defined portraits of friends and family members, who served as models and for whom the sculptures are named. Unlike the busts, his large stone figures are not based on specific individuals. “The entire sculpture is in my head and hands before I pick up the chisel,” he explains of his process. Yet his figures also carry typical Israeli or Biblical names in a whimsical melding of the personal and universal.

“With the busts, I wanted to experiment with classical portraiture, which traditionally emphasizes detailed features, because my style and the stone don’t allow me this full range of expression,” says Vaadia. “It is another way to challenge an age-old tradition and to show that we are basically all the same, that we are all connected to the earth and to each other.” He hesitates, pointing to the crutches and cast mounted on his studio wall, reminding him of the time a boulder crushed his leg. “But it’s always physically challenging and labor-intensive,” he says. “The process and the materials, they keep me humble.”

Art & Antiques New York correspondent Dana Micucci is the author of several books on art, antiques and collecting, including Artists in Residence: A Guide to the Homes and Studios of Eight 19th-Century Artists In and Around Paris.