Russian artist opposed to Putin's war in Ukraine finds refuge in Oregon

The ongoing war in Ukraine has impacted tens of millions of people, including Russians who have Ukrainian relatives. A Russian artist’s life took a dramatic turn after the war broke out in 2022. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

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Amna Nawaz: The ongoing war in Ukraine has impacted tens of millions of people, including Russians who have Ukrainian relatives.

Special correspondent Cat Wise recently spent a day with a Russian artist whose life took a dramatic turn after the war broke out in 2022. Her report is part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Cat Wise: The walk to work in downtown Bend, Oregon, is fairly short these days for artist Anton Yakushev, but it’s a long way from home.

Yakushev, who is 39, was born and raised in a city on the outskirts of Moscow called Kolomna. Today, he’s an internationally recognized metal sculptor who has spent a lot of time over the past 20 years working with forges and fire.

His craft requires patience and speed. After the metal is hot enough, he has less than a minute to shape it.

Anton Yakushev, Metal Sculptor (through interpreter): I studied to become an artist. After I tried working with metal, I realized this is the material I would use my entire life.

Cat Wise: His intricate works, which can be found, among other places, on the streets of Russia and in a Memphis museum, may look like they were cast from molds, but they are all hand-forged.

Seamless welds and carefully placed rivets hold together the individual pieces of each sculpture.

Anton Yakushev (through interpreter): I simply consider myself first an artist and only then a blacksmith. I don’t want to prove anything, to explain anything with my art. First and foremost, this is my world, and then people connect to it and understand something, find something of their own in it, draw their own things. My art allows people to fantasize.

This is my favorite hammer. This is for forge very huge metal.

Cat Wise: Yakushev’s distinctive approach to metal art has been sought after, taking him from Russia to international museums, art schools and professional workshops, where he’s been invited to teach, and artistic competitions, where he’s received recognitions and awards.

But for the last 2.5 years, Bend and this workshop have been his life and his refuge. Yakushev and his wife, Katia, who is also Russian, arrived in the U.S. in mid-February 2022 to teach at blacksmithing events.

Katia Yakushev, Wife of Anton Yakushev: We were planning to spend in the States about three months, and then Russia invaded Ukraine in — at the end of February. And we realized that we’re not able to go back to Russia.

Cat Wise: Going back, they say, would have put Yakushev, who spent a lot of time with family in Ukraine when he was younger and opposes the Russian government, at risk of jail or worse.

Anton Yakushev (through interpreter): When the war broke out, it cut through everything and completely broke me, because I spent half my life in Ukraine. My mother’s Ukrainian. It was already an extreme point with Crimea, and, of course, eventually, the war.

Cat Wise: After Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine a decade ago, Yakushev joined protests and refused to participate in a government-backed art project celebrating the annexation.

How were you impacted as an artist by your political views, your opposition to the government?

Anton Yakushev (through interpreter): I was cut off everywhere. I wasn’t accepted into competitions. I wasn’t accepted to the union of artists of Russia. There was a block on me everywhere.

Cat Wise: His opposition has also come through in his art, including a series of haunting soldier sculptures he began making in 2012 with his brother, who is also a metal artist, called The Leaves Cover the War.

The works were created with old metal they found in World War II era battlefields in Russia.

Anton Yakushev (through interpreter): This was the main idea of our works, to show all the horrors of the war, and that it is the most horrible thing that can happen to someone, and, in fact, the world.

Cat Wise: The turmoil in their own lives following the outbreak of the war is fading day by day as the couple have adjusted to their new life in Bend, where a community of fellow artists and blacksmiths have been offering support.

Once an essential craft, today, there are estimated to be only 2,500 professional blacksmiths in the U.S. And one of them is Joe Elliott.

Joe Elliott, Blacksmith: He’s going to be influencing the world of metal working for a very long time to come.

Cat Wise: Elliott, who’s been a blacksmith in the Bend area for the past 40 years, first met Yakushev in 2019 at a workshop.

Joe Elliott: We made a praying mantis, and I remember him rolling out the drawing, and we taped it to the board, and it was — the drawing itself which just drop-dead that gorgeous.

Cat Wise: Now they see each other just about every day. Elliott owns the forge business where Yakushev has been working, and they often collaborate.

Earlier this year, Elliott and Yakushev worked with several other local artists on a life-size eagle, now on permanent display at the High Desert Museum in Bend.

Joe Elliott: Having him in the shop puts a new wind in my sails. But Anton has brought to me this whole other way of looking at metal, coming up with this substantial piece by lots of little pieces, and I’m fascinated by it.

Cat Wise: Yakushev has also been learning from Elliott, who has encouraged him to explore new art forms like jewelry. Some of those pieces and others are now for sale at the workshop, online, and will be shown at upcoming art shows by the couple who are now focused on their future.

Their application for permanent asylum in the U.S. was recently approved.

For the “PBS News Hour,” I’m Cat Wise in Bend, Oregon.