ScottFHallSculpture006

myminifactory

These works form a single body of work that art and design professor Scott F. Hall has been creating from 1989 to present, starting with his BFA in sculpture in 1991 and MFA in sculpture in 1994. Hall initially developed this style by drawing large, interconnected spans of figures within drawings up to 3.5 meters wide. The drawn figures emerged through a process of automatic additive and subtractive mark making that induced pareidolia, or visions conjured from the amorphous field, similar to cloud reading. Once noticed in the field, each figure could be elaborated upon to bring it into sharper focus. As an undergraduate sculpture major at the time, Hall soon began creating equivalent 3-D imagery focused on a single clay-modeled figure presented in a particular pose, usually in half-bodied form depicted from the pelvis upward. Throughout this three-decade-long series, Hall's sculptures show figures in solitary and bound conditions, referencing Existentialist philosophy that was of focal interest to him during the late '80s Postmodern disillusionment period. Although Hall's philosophical outlook has moved beyond Existentialism and Postmodernism, his figures retain a stark and quietly tortured look for consistency. Every sculpture in this series remains untitled, mirroring the surrogate nature of Hall's figures. In each case, a Hall sculpture begins with white oil-based clay on a small scale, with heights ranging from 12 to 20 centimeters. Modeling is done entirely with fingers, while composition of poses occurs during study phases prior to actual sculpting. Hall sculpts each figure quickly and from memory, producing works that exhibit high realism in an impressionist sense, inviting viewers to interpret each sculpture for themselves through cloud reading. Following sculpting, each clay figure is turntable-scanned, cleaned of stray pixels, and converted to an STL file. If digital processing artifacts persist, Hall accepts them as markers of the process. Several of Hall's earliest pieces were molded in silicone and cast in wax, plaster, or resin, while the first piece remains a one-of-a-kind lost wax bronze in the artist's collection. Contact email: Scott.Hall@ucf.edu Biography: https://svad.cah.ucf.edu/faculty-staff/?id=92