Isaac Duncan III creates mindful metal
The small gallery in the School of Visual Art and Design at Southern Adventist University is full of Isaac Duncan III’s art, some of the art is bigger than I am, and behind me are glass walls so people outside can watch people inside looking at the art.
Plus, under the lights, it’s hot.
It’s a little intimidating.
Directly in front of me is a large metal piece reflecting the light from surfaces that look like they’ve been burnished with a grinder, the round-and-round texture still visible. All around are similar sculptures in different sizes, built of juxtaposed curved and rectilinear shapes looking as if they were made of children’s blocks (but metal) mounted on long metal cylindrical stems that might be legs or struts or even trunks.
I’m a little afraid of the big piece confronting me, so I sidle off to the right and check out some smaller works mounted on glass shelves.
“May I touch?” I ask.
“Yes,” says the sculptor, Isaac Duncan III, behind me.
I rasp my thumb along an edge and almost get cut on a stray twizzle of metal. These things are not only beautiful—they’re fierce. And though they’re small and quite abstract, they have a lively energy that leaves me thinking, “What is it?”
The central work, when I get to it, is still impressive—both vibrant and massive—and seems to regard me, though there’s nothing that suggests face or eyes.
Outside the gallery, speaking with Duncan and joined by Southern professor of art history and gallery coordinator Giselle Hasel, he tells us:
“[‘What is it’] is a useful question for those who are asking the question. My response is, ‘What do you see?’ and taking it back to fundamentals like ‘What different components do you see?’ and then to questions like ‘What is it doing, what is that circle doing, that sphere doing, those lines doing?’
“I have lots of meanings behind a lot of this stuff but I have…a basic goal of why I create, why I decided to remain an artist and not pursue other things. If somebody asks me a question that allows that answer, that’s when they get it.”
Like the big sculptures in the gallery, I sidle up to that question, first asking about the staging of the exhibition. Duncan says he was introduced to Hasel by artist Alex Loza.
“[Isaac] did most of the curating, choosing where things are going to go,” Hasel says. “The objects talk to one another, they really do.”
The lighting, so intense, bringing out the various textures of the metal, was created by local artist Loren Howard, Hazel adds.
We talk a little more about staging an exhibition, and then I get around to it: “Why do you make art?”
Duncan responds with a query.
“My question is this: If I have a piece, if I have these pieces here, and people can walk in this gallery and identify and get emotional about a piece they are looking at, why can’t they look at the person next to them and accept them for who they are? I created these pieces that are inanimate, I place them out in public, and I hope people become attracted to them. At the same time my question is going to be: ‘If you can accept this, why can’t you accept the person next to you?’ That is my underlying meaning or purpose of creating and setting the pieces out. The process of acceptance.”
You can find Isaac Duncan’s work—these pieces of public sculpture asking to be accepted as their own stark, quirky selves—anywhere in Chattanooga. They’re becoming our neighbors, much as Sandy the Flower Man once was. A recent piece at The Bethlehem Center (“The Beth”) on 38th Street, incorporated Ghanaian-style adinkra symbols created by young people at The Beth to decorate a Sankofa bird.
Duncan isn’t a native Chattanoogan, though. He comes from Brooklyn and spent much of his career in the Midwest, where he taught art and sculpture in the elementary and middle grades and at the University of Kentucky.
The recipient of a prestigious Lyman T. Johnson Fellowship from the University of Kentucky, Duncan came to Chattanooga to work for sculptor John Henry before starting his own studio and embarking on a series of partnerships with AVA, The Hunter Museum, the Chattanooga Public Art Committee, and more.
We’re glad he’s here, and we hope he stays to keep populating the city with lively visitors who encourage us to make room for them, and each other, in their hearts.
Duncan’s “From the Floor to the Wall” exhibit is in the John C. Williams Art Gallery in Brock Hall at Southern Adventist University. It will be open until December 2nd.