Unbridled! A Photo Essay on Hippopotamus Sex…, Artist Notes:

Here is MORE frank honesty… it frightens me to share the Unbridled! series on my ART page, in that this work is comedic, design/craft based, and essentially commercial in nature, but I believe HOW this work came to be provides a life lesson, especially for artists, and as such, I’ve decided that it is important for me to include it…

The year prior to Unbridled! was my biggest career year to date in San Francisco’s emerging art world. I had left my role as a Founder/Lead Staff Writer of San Francisco Art Magazine to become a Program Director at Blue Room, the City’s largest not-for-profit art space. I had completed 2 solos and a MYRIAD of group shows, most of which were quite successful, critically and financially. I was manic, working 14+ hour days, seven days a week at the gallery, thinking I’d become the Bay Area’s version of Alfred Stieglitz in leading a next-century version of the 291 Gallery. My career consisted of lecturing, publishing, and client/artist/gallery visual program development. It was an agonizing and heavenly struggle.

And then without a lot of warning, my own personal ART career bubble violently burst. The gallery failed to raise money past our 1st round/capital expansion fund, and I literally went from drinking with clients at the Palace Hotel to temping at the Palace Hotel as a database clerk during the holiday season… Christmas morning, I had $6 in my checking account.

Emotionally, life became rather bleak >>> I was unable to distinguish my personal/creative identity from the failure at the gallery, and endured a prolonged state of creative paralysis. This went on unshakably for about 9 months, until one day, I was at my freelance job talking to artist David Henshaw, who showed me how he had taken some stuffed animals meant for corporate teambuilding, and taped their hands together in symbolism of the identity of an artist caged in a business environment. On an impulse, I moved two of the animals still bound into a sexual position, and in that instant, I felt the healing salve of the need to express myself creatively…

What resulted was 2 “comeback” gallery exhibitions totaling 39 digitally produced c-prints of miniature stuffed animal hippopotami caught in flagrante.

Ironically, comedy allowed me to communicate to a new and larger audience subject matter that was sexually, politically, and socially darker than all of my previous work; and yet still provided *revenue* and *a hit* when my ego desperately needed both of those things. I also learned that the creative healing process can be rather arbitrary, and that for me, comedy was a purgatory back into the power/frailty narratives that traditionally drive my work.

To see more work from Unbridled! or to read the artist statement, please e-mail me at cs@christopherstout.com.

From the press release, "Unbridled! is a digitally produced series of miniature stuffed animal hippopotami caught in flagrante. All of the sets are hand constructed utilizing household objects with backdrops built in Microsoft PowerPoint. All orientations and sexual penchants are explored and celebrated..."

After the Game - Locker Room Shower, 2004. C-print of the digitally produced series of miniature stuffed animal hippopotami caught in flagrante. All of the sets are hand constructed utilizing household objects with backdrops built in Microsoft PowerPoint. (Image 26 of 39)