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Elisha Hall, 19
What I Do
I didn't have a sculpture space 'cause I'm an art-education student taking sculpture classes. And I don't like carrying stuff to class 'cause I think sculpture's bulky. So I figured my friends can walk themselves to class, and I can paint them, and they could look like sculptures. The title of the piece was "I Don't Have a Sculpture Space" because I didn't have a place to, like, work on anything like handblown or crafty.
For the actual in-class presentation, we did that on Broad Street. At first I was kinda like, "I'm in my bra and underwear on Broad Street," but then it's weird because when you're painted you don't feel as naked. It's really weird — you feel like you have tons of clothes on.
So we stood like statues for a while, and then we just wanted to be normal people 'cause we were people, but we were being sculptures. So, we all sat around and took a little break and smoked cigarettes.
The response was great. Everyone that walked by loved it, and, like, my sculpture class loved it. They thought it was great because I didn't have a sculpture space, and I couldn't work on it. They thought it was an excellent problem-solving thing. They liked the fact that we were standing around when we were taking a break. And we were like, smoking and stuff, being natural even though we were painted completely gray.
About two weeks earlier, me and seven or eight of my friends went out [to the Lee Monument], and I painted all of them. And they all stood on the Lee Monument, and I got 30-some pictures of them. And that was the first part of the sculpture critique — [my class] looked at the pictures. Then they came outside and saw us and got to see the real thing, even though it was on a smaller scale.
I really like people. I really like the human form. I'm a painter, but that was my way of doing my painting — you know, making it sculpture.
For the actual in-class presentation, we did that on Broad Street. At first I was kinda like, "I'm in my bra and underwear on Broad Street," but then it's weird because when you're painted you don't feel as naked. It's really weird — you feel like you have tons of clothes on.
So we stood like statues for a while, and then we just wanted to be normal people 'cause we were people, but we were being sculptures. So, we all sat around and took a little break and smoked cigarettes.
The response was great. Everyone that walked by loved it, and, like, my sculpture class loved it. They thought it was great because I didn't have a sculpture space, and I couldn't work on it. They thought it was an excellent problem-solving thing. They liked the fact that we were standing around when we were taking a break. And we were like, smoking and stuff, being natural even though we were painted completely gray.
About two weeks earlier, me and seven or eight of my friends went out [to the Lee Monument], and I painted all of them. And they all stood on the Lee Monument, and I got 30-some pictures of them. And that was the first part of the sculpture critique — [my class] looked at the pictures. Then they came outside and saw us and got to see the real thing, even though it was on a smaller scale.
I really like people. I really like the human form. I'm a painter, but that was my way of doing my painting — you know, making it sculpture.
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