ScottFHallSculpture030

myminifactory

These pieces comprise one comprehensive body of work that has been created by art and design professor Scott F. Hall (BFA in sculpture, 1991, MFA in sculpture, 1994) from 1989 to the present. Hall developed this style initially through creating large, interconnected spans of figures within drawings that were up to 3.5 meters wide. The drawn figures emerged through an automatic process of additive and subtractive mark making that tended to induce pareidolia (visions conjured from the amorphous field, as in cloud reading). Once noticed in the field, each figure could be further elaborated upon to bring it more fully into view. As an undergraduate sculpture major at the time, Hall 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 depict figures in a solitary and bound condition, referring directly 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 the sake of consistency. Every sculpture in this series remains untitled, which is appropriately in sync with the surrogate nature of Hall's figures. In each case, a Hall sculpture begins as a small-scale work in white oil-based clay, with each figure ranging from 12 to 20 centimeters in height. Modeling is typically done entirely with the fingers. Composition of poses occurs only during study phases, which always occur prior to 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 themselves. Following the act of sculpting, each clay figure is turntable-scanned, cleaned of stray pixels, and converted to STL file. If 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, remaining in the artist's collection. Contact email: Scott.Hall@ucf.edu