ScottFHallSculpture009

myminifactory

These creations form one cohesive body of work that art and design professor Scott F. Hall has been crafting from 1989 to present. Hall developed this style initially by creating massive, intertwined groups of figures within drawings that were up to 3.5 meters wide. The drawn figures emerged through a somewhat automatic process of additive and subtractive mark making which tended to induce pareidolia (visions conjured from the amorphous field, as in cloud reading). Once noticed in the field, each figure could be elaborated upon to more fully bring it into view. As an undergraduate sculpture major at that early 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 only from the pelvis upward). Throughout this three-decade-long series, Hall's sculptures show figures in solitary and bound conditions: this depiction directly relates to Existentialist philosophy which was of focal interest to him in the late '80s during the heyday of Postmodern disillusionment. Although by now Hall's philosophical outlook has moved well beyond Existentialism and Postmodernism, the stark and quietly tortured look of his figures persists for the sake of consistency. Every sculpture in this series and the entire series itself remains untitled, which is appropriately in-sync with the surrogate nature of Hall's figures. In each case, a Hall sculpture begins in white oil-based clay on a rather small scale, the height of each figure ranging about 12 to 20 centimeters. Typically, modeling is done entirely with the fingers. Composition of poses (i.e., the observation of persons set into poses) happens only during study phases; these always occur prior to the actual sculpting of clay. Ultimately, Hall sculpts each figure quickly and from memory. The works produced exhibit high realism, but in an impressionist sense: each viewer is led to cloud read each Hall sculpture for himself/herself. Following the act of sculpting, each clay figure is turntable-scanned, cleaned of stray pixels, and converted to STL file. If some artifacts of digital processing persist (i.e., small areas of faceting), Hall tends to accept these as markers of process. Several of Hall's earliest pieces were molded in silicone and cast in wax, plaster, or resin. The very first piece in this series exists as a one-of-a-kind lost wax bronze. It remains in the collection of the artist.