ScottFHallSculpture026

myminifactory

These pieces make up one cohesive body of work that art and design professor Scott F. Hall has been creating since 1989 to the present. Hall developed this style initially by crafting large, intertwined spans of figures within drawings that were as wide as 3.5 meters. The drawn figures emerged through an automatic process of additive and subtractive mark making, which often induced pareidolia - visions conjured from amorphous fields, like cloud reading. Once spotted in the field, each figure could be elaborated upon to bring it into clearer view. As an undergraduate sculpture major at that time, Hall soon began creating equivalent 3-D imagery focused on single clay-modeled figures 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 showcase figures in solitary and bound conditions: this depiction directly references Existentialist philosophy, which was of great interest to him during the late '80s amidst Postmodern disillusionment. Although Hall's philosophical outlook has moved beyond Existentialism and Postmodernism, his figures' stark and quietly tortured look persists for consistency. Each sculpture in this series and the entire series itself remains untitled, fitting with the surrogate nature of Hall's figures. Every piece begins as white oil-based clay on a small scale, with each figure ranging 12 to 20 centimeters tall. Modeling is usually done entirely with fingers, while composition of poses (i.e., observing persons set into poses) occurs only during study phases prior to actual sculpting. Ultimately, Hall sculpts each figure quickly and from memory. The resulting works exhibit high realism in an impressionist sense: each viewer is led to interpret Hall's sculptures 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 (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, remaining in the artist's collection. Contact Scott at scott.hall@ucf.edu for more information. Visit https://svad.cah.ucf.edu/faculty-staff/?id=92 to learn more about Hall's biography.