ScottFHallSculpture028

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These artworks form a comprehensive body of work created by art and design professor Scott F. Hall, who earned his BFA in sculpture in 1991 and his MFA in sculpture in 1994. Since 1989, Hall has been crafting this style through the development of large, interconnected spans of figures within drawings that are up to 3.5 meters wide. The drawn figures emerged from an automatic process of additive and subtractive mark making that tended to induce 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 clearer view. As an undergraduate sculpture major at that early time, Hall began creating equivalent 3-D imagery focused on a single clay-modeled figure presented in a particular pose, often in half-bodied form (depicted only from the pelvis upward). Throughout this three-decade-long series, Hall's sculptures show figures in a solitary and bound condition: this depiction directly refers to Existentialist philosophy, which was of great interest to him during the late '80s amidst Postmodern disillusionment. Although Hall's philosophical outlook has moved well beyond Existentialism and Postmodernism, the stark and quietly tortured look of his figures persists for consistency. Every sculpture in this series remains untitled, fitting with the surrogate nature of Hall's figures. Each Hall sculpture begins as a small-scale model made from white oil-based clay, with the height of each figure ranging about 12 to 20 centimeters. Modeling is usually done entirely with the fingers. Composition of poses (i.e., observing persons set into poses) occurs only during study phases; these always take place prior to actual sculpting of 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 the act of sculpting, each clay figure is turntable-scanned, cleaned of stray pixels, and converted to an 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 first piece in this series exists as a one-of-a-kind lost wax bronze and remains in the artist's collection. Contact information: Scott.Hall@ucf.edu Biography: https://svad.cah.ucf.edu/faculty-staff/?id=92