Anything but Unyielding
Every Isaac Duncan sculpture starts as a universe in the palm of his hand, an exploration of how space and form interact, and how we see the world. But it is his vision that takes each piece to its monumental finish.
Sculptor Isaac Duncan creates large-scale, stainless steel pieces that grow out of a drive to challenge the fundamentals of form, space, balance, implied motion and scale. Nonobjective abstractions, the delineation of a thought.
Or, to put it another way: they're autobiographical. In one sense, any sculptor could make this claim, that their work is philosophy made palpable. But for Isaac, both the crafting of a piece and its output strike closer to home, to the heart.
When Isaac talks about his background, his family, his philosophy, and his materials, the words become interchangeable. Similarly, standing in his warehouse-turned studio off of Chattanooga's Main Street, he seems a part of the space – covered in dust, along with the mismatched tables and desks, boxes and tools. An American flag here, a construction cone there. The space feels part hardware store, part garage. And Isaac stands in the center of it all, a T.I.G. torch in his hand.
At a glance, you might think that a free spirit lives in this space, but it only takes a moment to see his formal training shine through. During his studies – BFA from Notre Dame; MFA from the University of Kentucky – Isaac learned to follow a classical sculptor's flow process: sketch, model, actualization.
“When I was in the school of higher learning, there was always that question,” he says. “Is it the concept first, the thought? Is it the model? Is it the sketch, your initial two-dimensional translation from that thought? The last piece is derivative of everything else, so what is the actual art work?”
Taking that question to heart, and wanting to explore where art begins, he stopped sketching, removing it from his process. So he always works in the round – starting with small-scale models, small enough to hold in your hand, exploring how a form interacts with space and viewers might interact with the form, before working to sculptures that are often 20 feet high.
Egg is an insider’s view, a celebration, an index of stories of great people, doing great things in Chattanooga.