Artist expresses creativity in diverse ways

Huxley expresses his creativity in numerous ways, including modeling. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Huxley expresses his creativity in various ways, including drawing, modeling and doll customizing.

“I spend myself in different artistic ways because I can't just keep to drawing or doll customizing,” he said. “I do a lot of stuff. I started sewing at one point when I was little. I would use polymer clay to make little sculptures. I genuinely cannot stay on one thing. Over time, I gathered quite a few different hobbies.”

The Bulgarian artist is currently focusing on two avenues.

“I'm really emphasizing on growing myself as a brand, as a person and separately my doll channels,” he said. “Because I want to have two channels, one which is just for me, my types of jokes, my humor and some gaming, and then a second one just for dolls because those honestly give me such a comfort. A lot of people see them as girl toys, which they absolutely aren't. Honestly, those are very creative and artistic. It really makes me mad when people just see them as a child's toy, because in order for that child's toy to happen, you need designers, you need 3-D sculptors. So much design and art. It's no different than collecting anime figures. What would be the difference between a doll and an anime figure except one is poseable? You can change the clothing and the hairstyles.”

Huxley, 20, enjoys being a collector.

“I don't understand why people need to shame others for what their hobby is,” he said. “You don't personally gain anything from shaming. I've had a lot of people shame me in my personal life for doing this hobby. The thing is, I'm not one to get easily influenced by other people's opinions. I first look at my opinion and then my close people's opinions, like family, close friends. And then even when I get their opinions, I still think, is their opinion correct? Should I allow their opinion to affect me? There's a lot of people who listen to everyone's opinion and they become something they're not. They become what other people want them to be instead of what they want to be. I've been following that through my whole life.”

Huxley eventually added another layer to collecting.

“When I got a little bit older, I started collecting ponies, but I would customize them,” he said. “I was both in the My Little Pony fandom and the FNaF fandom, and I would see people on YouTube. They would take ponies and turn them into different characters but ponified, and that's when I learned about customizing. And after ponies, it was dolls. Around 14, 15, I started getting dolls, started slowly trying out. At this point, I've ruined so many dolls, but I don't see them as ruined. I see them as lessons. I've burned their hair, smudged their face, stained them, but then I have the knowledge for a future customization not to do certain stuff.”

Huxley does both restoration and creation of new characters.

“It's a little bit of everything depending on what I feel like,” he said. “Sometimes I will buy a very busted up doll and restore it to how it's originally supposed to look. Sometimes I would change a little thing. Sometimes I would make an entirely my character or a different character from a game or something. Genuinely, whichever I feel like. I don't mind doing any of them. If I like the design, I will keep the doll as originally was designed. If I want something a little bit changed or if I just like the base of it, like the body, the sculpt, and then I'll turn it into a completely different character.”

Huxley said almost anything can become art.

“You can easily be an artist,” he said. “Art is everywhere. That's why I hate minimalism, because people who design houses, the interior, back in the day, the 2000s, the interior was actually: wow. It wasn't this white, beige clothing to celebrities back in the day. They were all dressed up in intricate outfits. That is art. Fashion is art. Designer is art. Art is honestly everywhere. That's also another thing I love about older phones. I genuinely miss them because phones nowadays have become copy and paste. Before when they were still with buttons, phones used to have personality. Whether you would want a flip phone or the ones that show the keyboard, there were all kinds of variants. You can tell someone's personality based on the phone they had because phones used to be unique. I do have a few phones collected from secondhand that are those older types that I just have displayed because I genuinely love how they used to look.”

Huxley said design isn’t the only thing lacking in contemporary society.

“I've noticed the world is losing color,” he said. “Everything is becoming white, beige and black. Color is getting stripped away and no one is realizing. We, just in general, as humans need to stop with this minimalism. It's not good. There are people who like minimalism, but the thing is it became way too mainstream and a lot of people get easily influenced and they're just not good. When your home is all white and it has no personality, what's the point? Your home should tell a story, a story about you.”

“Anything artistic I love doing, modeling, customizing, acting. Those types of stuff I absolutely love.”

Huxley always seeks ways to express his creativity.

“Before the collages, I would pretend to be a model,” he said. “A lot of these pictures, I have an outfit prepared and I have pictures taken. I recently did get a professional photo shoot done. Those collages are just me modeling myself and showing people with not just the picture of me, but the picture of me behind art, the collage itself, to show people what I'm interested in, little details about myself. In the collages, you can see it's always old Windows. Therefore, I show people how apps used to be. I like how they were styled. I would add little drawings, not my personal drawings, to them. The Frutiger Metro style I also really like, and I would add it to my collages as well. That's just me pretending to be a model in those collages, but with a beautiful background behind me instead of just the picture.”

Huxley also enjoys performing.

“I also love acting,” he said. “I did have some acting courses. Anything artistic I love doing, modeling, customizing, acting. Those types of stuff I absolutely love.”

Huxley wants to reach his targeted audience on social media.

“Sadly, since I am in Bulgaria, I have a very small reach to people,” he said. “Let's say I post something on TikTok, something if I was in America, would blow up. I'm strictly posting content in English because I want to attract an English-speaking audience because most Bulgarians aren't interested in my niches. I still have friends in Bulgaria who have the exact same hobbies as me, who also collect dolls, but those are very few people. I hate the new algorithm, how it specifically targets your location and recommends it to people in your location even when I'm putting tags specifically in my niche, and it still recommends them to people who have zero interest in it. I don't understand why. I end up having very little views. And that's the sad part because I need to promote my videos. I need to pay for the videos in order to select which countries I want to attract.”

Huxley always had an artistic streak.

“Ever since I can remember,” he said. “The youngest memory I have is in kindergarten. I would have those fashion books, again for girls, with bare models, no hair, no clothes. I would scribble on them. I would play imaginary stuff with my dolls, and sometimes I didn't even need dolls. I have memories when I would be at my village and I would take flowers. I would turn it upside down, cut it, turn it upside down, and I would pretend it's a fairy or something. My imagination had no restrictions. I can make a doll out of a flower. And I would just play like that.”

Huxley said technology has supplanted creativity in youth.

“This is why little kids should not have phones,” he said. “They get zombified. They get dumbed down. A lot of adults give phones to their kids when toys exist. I'm talking very little kids. Your kids should not have a phone until they're first grade. And when they're first grade, they should have a bare minimum phone. Not one with social medias. Flip phone. No social medias, just for calls if some emergency happens because your kid is going to school by first grade. I got Instagram when I was 14. And right now, I'd be seeing kids who are 10 years old have the newest phone. Excuse me, why is your parent doing this? You should be playing with toys at that age.”

Huxley recalled what spurred his collecting as a teen.

“I hadn't had a doll in years, and I saw this doll in the store,” he said. “I was like, I want to buy it. And then I was like, I want to buy my childhood dolls back. Over time, since I only had allowance money and birthday money, I would save them, save them, save them, buy a doll. Honestly, because of those, I can proudly say I'm not addicted to nicotine. I'm not addicted to alcohol or any other substances because at 15, those were my therapy. Those were my thing to relax. They helped me not get addicted to these substances. I have had smoked cigarettes before, but it wasn't the same. I at one point did start smoking, but I was already 18, so I just stopped after a few months. Here in Bulgaria, you can see kids smoking at 12. Also, kids here drink on a regular basis at 14. That's when you start smoking and drinking here, and then you start quitting when you turn 18. That's the cycle in Bulgaria typically.”

Huxley stays really fit.

“When I was a kid, I was extremely skinny,” he said. “I have a very fast metabolism. Around 16, I started working out, not because of an insecurity. It's just I noticed when I worked out, I have more energy. Back then, I used to go to the gym in the middle of the night, but now I go to the gym early in the morning. When I go to the gym early in the morning, it's like drinking three coffees at once. The first thing I do when I wake up, I go and do something productive and it motivates me for the rest of the day to be productive. I go to the gym for one hour just to get myself doing something, being active. And I did want to shape my body just a little bit, nothing dramatic. I used to have a very flat chest and my stomach would poke out a little bit even though I was skinny. I don't feel insecure about my body when I look in the mirror. I love what I'm seeing. Yes, there could be improvements, but I'm not gonna rush them. I just do it to get some energy and stay healthy.”

Huxley doesn’t hide his orientation.

“I don't understand why people get triggered by pronouns,” he said. “Pronouns are everywhere. Why are you getting triggered? Do you not understand the language? It confuses me when people say I don't believe in pronouns. What do you mean you don't believe in pronouns? You do realize you, I, he, her, those are pronouns. How am I supposed to refer to you? Without pronouns. How does that work?”

Huxley noted prejudiced people are often hiding their own desires.

“I've noticed the most homophobic people are always the ones who are the gayest,” he said. “I've had homophobes try to get something sexual out of me or try to experiment with me. And it's very funny because the more homophobic someone is, they're trying to hide something. When I see someone acting homophobic, I'm like, yeah, so you're trying to mask something.”

Huxley, who has experienced homophobic bullying, said people should not let themselves become divided.

“We're getting separated into groups, into homosexuals and straight people, women and men,” he said. “So we stay divided, so we fight each other, so we don't fight the extremely wealthy people who control us. That's a conspiracy theory I 100 percent believe. They separate us by everything. They make us hate each other so we can't unite and take them down.”

“You need to work on yourself, which is the hard part.”

One of Huxley’s many creations.

Huxley wants to expand his reach.

“My goals are to grow my channel as much as possible,” he said. “I genuinely want to be famous. I want to be able to influence people in a positive way. I love it when I can already imagine being live on stream, playing a game and just connecting with people, chatting with them. I love doing that. It genuinely brings me joy to do it. It would also bring the people joy because if I become famous, it's going to be their favorite creator. My job as a content creator is to entertain people. I do it with a passion. So therefore, for my fans, I want to provide quality content. I don't want it to be stripped down because of, oh, you can't do this on YouTube, you can't do that on TikTok. No, I want to be raw. I want to be the most honest version because I hate how, oh, if you want to make money off of YouTube, you can't curse, you can't do this, you can't do that. Why? Why do I have to censor myself? I want to be able to give my truest self, not a censored version of it, because some people may be uncomfortable with certain words.”

Huxley encouraged others to pursue their creative passions.

“They should do it for themselves,” he said. “First of all, you need to do it for yourself before you do it for other people. I've had friends do certain stuff, they like their passion, but they're doing it just to prove a point. No, the first point you should prove is to yourself, and then you can go and prove other people's points afterwards. But it needs to be pure, it needs to be for you. It needs to genuinely bring you joy.”

Huxley said people need to find their inner strength.

“It's really harsh, but people to a certain degree for certain stuff need to stop victimizing themselves,” he said. “For example, if someone calls you a bad name on the street, curses at you, tells you that you're this, this and that, it's yourself to blame if you start believing that. You should not allow people to change your perception of yourself. A lot of people like to blame it on other people. Oh, they called me this, so now I'm insecure. No, you yourself are allowing yourself to be insecure. You need to have a deep chat within yourself and realize why you're insecure, because you are allowing yourself to be insecure. It's not the other person's fault. The other person has insecurities of their own and they're just projecting them onto you and you are open arms allowing that insecurity to go in you. If I had to listen to everyone in my life or sometimes even family members, I wouldn't be the person I would be today. I would be a completely different person shaped by other people. It's scary to think I could be that person if I listen to them.”

Huxley said it’s more productive to work on self-improvement.

“They do need to work on themselves to not be influenced so easily by others' opinions,” he said. “Work within yourself. There were points where I started having insecurities of my own, but it's not the person's fault who gave me the insecurity. It's my fault for accepting it. And once I realized that, I was like, no, I'm gonna work on myself because it's not just easy as it's my fault for giving my insecurity. Let me just remove it real fast. No, you need to work on yourself, which is the hard part. People don't want to work on themselves. People have gotten lazier and lazier. Work to improve yourself. Always try and be a better version of yourself than yesterday.”

The Grid does not divulge the legal names of artists and content creators who don’t disclose them publicly.

Huxley’s Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/starpaw.fluffs/

Huxley’s drawings: https://www.instagram.com/huxley.fluffs/

Huxley’s doll customizing: https://www.instagram.com/furpaw.studio/