ScottFHallSculpture025

myminifactory

These pieces make up a single body of work that art and design professor Scott F. Hall has been creating from 1989 to present. Hall created this style initially by developing large, entwined spans of figures within drawings which were up to 3.5 meters wide. The drawn figures emerged through an automatic process of additive and subtractive mark making, which tended to induce pareidolia (visions conjured from the amorphous field). Each figure noticed in the field could be elaborated upon to bring it into clearer view. As an undergraduate sculpture major at that time, Hall began creating equivalent 3-D imagery focused on a single clay-modeled figure presented in a particular pose. The figures were usually depicted only from the pelvis upward. Throughout this three-decades-long series, Hall's sculptures show figures in solitary and bound conditions: this depiction directly refers to Existentialist philosophy, which was of focal interest to him in the late '80s during the heyday of Postmodern disillusionment. Although Hall's philosophical outlook has moved beyond Existentialism and Postmodernism, the stark and quietly tortured look of his figures persists for consistency. Every sculpture in this series and the entire series itself remains untitled, fitting with the surrogate nature of Hall's figures. In each case, a Hall sculpture begins as white oil-based clay on a small scale, with the height of each figure ranging from 12 to 20 centimeters. Modeling is done entirely with the fingers. Composition of poses (i.e., observing persons set into poses) happens during study phases prior to sculpting the clay. Ultimately, Hall sculpts each figure quickly and from memory. The works produced exhibit high realism in an impressionist sense: each viewer is led to cloud read each Hall sculpture for themselves. Following sculpting, each clay figure is turntable-scanned, cleaned of stray pixels, and converted to an STL file. If digital processing artifacts persist (i.e., small areas of faceting), Hall accepts these as markers of process. Several of Hall's earliest pieces were molded in silicone and cast in wax, plaster, or resin. The first piece in this series exists as a one-of-a-kind lost wax bronze, remaining in the artist's collection. Contact email: Scott.Hall@ucf.edu Biography: https://svad.cah.ucf.edu/faculty-staff/?id=92