ScottFHallSculpture029

myminifactory

These pieces form one cohesive body of work created by art and design professor Scott F. Hall, who has been developing his style since 1989 to the present day. Hall initially invented this style by crafting large, interconnected groups of figures within drawings that stretched up to 3.5 meters wide. The drawn figures emerged through a process of automatic additive and subtractive mark making, which often induced pareidolia - visions conjured from the amorphous field, much like reading clouds. Once noticed 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 3D imagery focused on a single clay-modeled figure presented in a particular pose, often depicted only from the pelvis upward. Throughout this three-decade-long series, Hall's sculptures show figures in solitary and bound conditions, directly referencing Existentialist philosophy, which was of great interest to him during the late '80s amidst Postmodern disillusionment. Although his philosophical outlook has since moved beyond Existentialism and Postmodernism, the stark and quietly tortured look of his figures persists for consistency. Every sculpture in this series remains untitled, aligning with the surrogate nature of Hall's figures. Each piece begins as a white oil-based clay model on a relatively small scale, with each figure's height ranging from 12 to 20 centimeters. Modeling is typically done entirely with the fingers, while composition of poses occurs only during study phases prior to actual sculpting. Hall sculpts each figure quickly and from memory, resulting in high realism with an impressionist sense - each viewer is encouraged to interpret 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 (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 and remains in the artist's collection.