Christopher Stoll
Christopher Stoll, born 1991 is an American freelance illustrator, who has been featured on such websites as Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. He produces weekly content relating to popular culture and the current state of art in America on his website and DeviantArt page.
Career
Early in his career Stoll attempted work as a caricaturist , working at events and fairs in rural Texas, but he was not met with much luck in the field. He also briefly ran a Xanga blog, "State of the Art", which he billed as "A mix of creativity, culture, and controversy." Although he states he had "some success" with the project, he ultimately found the endeavor unrewarding and deleted the blog. During this time he began working full time as a freelance illustrator, producing work for friends and local businesses; the success of this work lead him to apply to companies like TPK Games and the online publication Star Frontiersman.
In 2013, he published a series of fanart images of Disney Princesses as Avengers which were quickly picked up and circulated by sites like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and the Disney owned website Babble. These images were viewed and shared hundreds of thousands of times and achieved momentary internet pop notoriety. It was here that Stoll established his public persona as an advocate of cultural inclusiveness and female empowerment. This series set a precedent for later work reinventing pop culture characters through changes in theme and setting. A popular recent example of this trend was "An Unexpected Hero" which was also widely circulated on Reddit and other online forums.
In 2014, Stoll left The United States to focus on self-employment in Japan, with his new outputs being his personal website and his YouTube channel. He currently does freelance conceptual design and comics for various corporate clientele.
Reception
Stoll's art is occasionally polarizing, but GeneRally well received. His work has been described as "a powerful way to flip the culture inside out." by Emma Mustichby at The Huffington Post From views espoused on his personal websites, Stoll positions himself firmly as someone who believes in the rights of creators to express themselves fully even in the face of potential controversy. Despite a reputation for fan art and [...] subject matter, Stoll demonstrates a progressive attitude against sexism in modern popular culture, and has argued against it frequently on his own site and various webpages. He regularly criticizes contemporary media for using attractive women as "decoration" and failing to account for alternative expressions of [...] desire.