Reflections on the Academy, Form, and the Solitude of the Sculptor
“The serenity of the creative personality – that is the complete liberation of consciousness from the influence of personal passions.” — Stanislavski
I have not yet fully mastered this quality. Four years ago, I didn’t even suspect its existence. My entry into the Academy was almost accidental – no one was more certain than I that it was absolutely impossible. I never dared to dream of sculpture; the fear that I wasn’t talented enough to even allow myself to dream was too great. I thought the Academy was a place for the Chosen… Now I know that, among everything else, there is also room for the Chosen.
The Memory of the North Building
I will not speak of technicalities, but rather try to trace the chronology of my time within the walls of the North Building. Several images fill my mind from those first days in the studio – images of deep emotional saturation that seem to have leapt out of their time and live today with organic density.
First, there was the way we were addressed by name from the very first day. It was a categorical demand for a personal and responsible attitude, for full trust and respect for individuality.
Second, there was the signal, unraveled only later, of the relentless presence of continuity. A reminder of the trees growing in the Academy courtyard, under which we sit and watch—the same trees the Old Master once observed. It was about the memory not of one person – too small and brief – but the memory of humanity. The strength of spirit not of one generation, but the thrust that carries the spirit, enriched by all generations before us.
When Sculpture is Poetry
“By chasing the impossible, we make certain situations of the spirit possible.”
Then came the joy. A quiet, inward joy. And then—the long conversations about the poet Debelyanov in the smoke-filled cafe of the Academy. The realization that Sculpture is Poetry. And Music. It is about seizing the consciousness and bringing it into a specific state—a feeling of something already lived or painfully familiar.
I think of the quiet courtyard, the white-blossomed cherry trees, and the mothers who always walk in black. And later, the charisma of Galin Malakchiev – the ability to love a creator before even knowing their work, simply through the strength of someone else’s reverence.
The Struggle with Form
“The thought may become confused, but the soul must not.”
My soul became confused quite early and quite permanently. I still remember what I thought about sculpture back then: a clash of forms in space. Diversity not only in texture but in shape. Form as a relationship between hard and soft, “anatomical” and free, full and empty, tense and calm.
Later, we were told to learn to strip things down to their essence—to reach the level of sensation through immutable, inherent qualities of the “object.”
By my second or third year, when the “plastic language” took center stage in our aesthetic platform, I felt I had suppressed all the plastic qualities I might have possessed. What I produced was faint, hesitant, lacking that nerve and impulse of revelation that I felt in my first months. It was a protective reaction against the fear. The insurmountable fear of making a mistake. It feels more comfortable not to try at all than to expose one’s deficiencies to public view.
The Will to Create
This emptiness—the lack of faith, the lack of strength born from inner necessity—is destructive. Without this will to create, it is impossible to liberate the consciousness from personal passions.
Yet, sometimes a quiet serenity surrounds me, reminding me of the village – that dead afternoon hour when an unbearable silence falls. The air is heavy. The moment is stretched to the breaking point, yet so quiet it hurts. In such moments, you feel your soul is capable of anything. Even to fly.
In these moments, sculpture doesn’t seem so impossible. It becomes clearer that:
- “Form has no sediment.”
- “Form exists simultaneously and is equally important everywhere.”
- “Sculpture has no face or back, no front or back plane.”
- “Volume must have form, but it is not necessary for form to have volume.”
In such hours, everything is Poetry and every sound is Music. Sculpture is everywhere. In such hours, Solitude is the fullest state of the spirit. It is so strong and all-encompassing that you long to share it immediately. Which is to say—to deprive yourself of it.
And that is the truth.