ScottFHallSculpture008

myminifactory

These masterpieces comprise one cohesive body of work that renowned art and design professor Scott F. Hall has been creating from 1989 to present, drawing upon his extensive experience in sculpture. Hall pioneered this style by crafting large, intricately intertwined figures within drawings that stretched up to 3.5 meters wide. The drawn figures emerged through an automatic process of additive and subtractive mark making, which triggered pareidolia, or visions conjured from the amorphous field, akin to cloud reading. Once discovered in the field, each figure could be refined and elaborated upon to bring it into sharper focus. As a sculpture major at the time, Hall soon began creating equivalent 3-D imagery focused on individual clay-modeled figures presented in specific poses, typically depicted from the pelvis upward. Throughout this three-decade-long series, Hall's sculptures showcase figures in solitary confinement: this depiction directly references Existentialist philosophy, which was a focal point of interest for him during the late '80s amidst Postmodern disillusionment. Although Hall's philosophical outlook has since evolved beyond Existentialism and Postmodernism, the stark and quietly tortured look of his figures persists as a testament to consistency. Each sculpture in this series begins with white oil-based clay on a small scale, with each figure ranging from 12 to 20 centimeters in height. Modeling is typically done entirely with the fingers, while composition of poses occurs only during study phases prior to actual sculpting. Hall then sculpts each figure quickly and from memory, producing works that exhibit high realism in an impressionist sense: each viewer is encouraged to cloud read each Hall sculpture for themselves. Following sculpting, each clay figure is turntable-scanned, cleaned of stray pixels, and converted to STL file. If digital processing artifacts persist, such as small areas of faceting, Hall tends to accept them as markers of process. Several of Hall's earliest pieces were molded in silicone and cast in wax, plaster, or resin, while the very first piece in this series exists as a one-of-a-kind lost wax bronze, remaining in the artist's collection.