The University of Montana graduate student has visited home since then. His trip this summer has taken on extra urgency. He wants to make a documentary about artists and their experiences during the war with Russia.

“I know it’s special that I’m going there,” he said. “I’ve gone there many times. I just want to capture it as much as possible. … I’m going there with the country changed forever, and I’m corresponding with a lot of artists that are working there, that continue their studio practice. I’m interested in talking to them.”

“War is a catalyst,” he said, that will change everything, including art, “when your city is occupied by an enemy force.”

In following the developments, he said many people’s art is incredible, albeit different, and in some cases “their content changed completely.”

He’s raising money on GoFundMe (see box) to help with the expenses. He envisions a short documentary — perhaps 30 minutes, along with other materials such as a photo slideshow that he can turn into a presentation.

He’s never made a movie before — he’s been seeking out tips from filmmaker friends and art professors, and doesn’t expect to make any money off the project.

He wants to show Montanans the reality of daily life for people just like them in dramatically different circumstances.

Last week, a friend in Kyiv told him that he’d only slept a few hours because of the Russian shelling.

“They just try to get the country to fall into submission because they’re losing really terribly on the actual battlefield,” he said.

Barrett says he’s “undoubtedly nervous” about the trip, but some of the wariness is about running into restrictions.

“I’m nervous about being stopped somewhere, and then not being able to go and see the people and see my family, which won’t happen because there’s people going into Ukraine,” he said.

One of his tools for getting his work out there, his Instagram account, got hacked recently and he’s been unable to get it unlocked. He built up 4,410 followers, who were treated to a post about Bitcoin. (He’s now at “therealsashabarrett”).

The account was also a means of selling work, and he’d also used it to fundraise for Ukrainian causes, including cups with the Ukrainian flag, war-time stamps and more.

Personal work

Artwork, finished and in progress, related to the war fills his studio on campus. After 15 years as a potter, he’s branching out into sculptural and narrative styles. Before, he decorated pots with wheat — a symbol of his home country, and a decorative flourish that lends itself well to brushes.

“Since getting to grad school, I have this freedom to make work on a different scale (with) the facility, resources and materials,” he said. He’s looking at the “aesthetics of war,” such as the color palette of camouflage broken up by a colored flag patch.

Now, there are shelves of gray cups with a blotchy Ukrainian flag, seemingly more urgent when the color has run down the side. On the base of another mug, he sculpted a small pile of ceramic sandbags — an allusion to Ukrainian statues and monuments that have been lined with such material to protect them from shrapnel. He’s made some of his own by hand, and might cast full-sized ones in the future.

A friend mailed him a vintage crate designed to hold shells for a Soviet Howitzer. He dug up images and specs online and hand-threw his own ceramic munitions. He says that after a life with no military affiliations, he now knows more than ever about these details.

Upcoming trip

Barrett was born in Sumy, situated east of Kyiv and close to the northeastern border with Russia.

He moved to Boise, Idaho, with his mother and stepfather when he was 10. He studied at Boise State University, spent time at UM through an exchange to be closer to the clay community here, then Pittsburgh for school, and returned here for his MFA. In 2019, he was named an “emerging artist” in Ceramics Monthly magazine.

He still speaks the Ukrainian language and has been home before, most recently around 2018.

He’s befriended artists online to interview for the movie. The subjects include Misha Birchenko, who plays drums for Nadya Dorfeeva, a pop singer who Barrett said is like the Billie Eilish of Ukraine. There’s a graffiti artist who goes by the handle Shumshumok, and Yeva Kafidova, a 2-D artist, and Yuliya Makliuk, a potter. He’s also been in touch with a tattoo artist and wants to talk with a painter.

His plan is to travel to Krakow, Poland, at the beginning of July, and then cross the border, making his way west to east, stopping in Lviv, Kyiv and Sumy, where he still has family. Due to its proximity to the border, the area around the city has been shelled heavily, but so far they’ve stayed.

“I do want to hear about their experience, especially my uncle. He’s been in a tank or a trench the last year,” he said.