Art in a changing climate
Artist, husband leave Yosemite
after fi res to fi nd inspiration,
purpose in Waldport
“A refugee is someone who survived and who
can create the future.”
— Amela Koluder
“Climate change does not respect border; it does
not respect who you are — rich and poor, small
and big. Th erefore, this is what we call ‘global
challenges,’ which require global solidarity.”
— Ban Ki-moon
T
here are myriad reasons why people set
down roots along the Oregon Coast:
“the ocean,” “the air,” “the laidback
lifestyle,” “the small town feel of the towns,”
“no rat race,” “the geological and ecological
beauty.”
For others, like First Nations cultures
(Coastal Salish), or Nehalem, their roots
were set down
thousands of years
ago, tied to land,
sky, forest and the
power of place.
Now, enter
the term
GO BENEATH THE
“envirogee” —
SURFACE WITH
derived from both
PAUL HAEDER
“environment”
and “refugee”
— a displaced
individual who has been forced to migrate
because of environmental devastation. Some
call themselves “climate refugees.”
For Anja Albosta, and her spouse, Mark,
relocating to Waldport is much more than a
geographic upheaval. “In 2018 my husband
and I left our home in the Yosemite area
due to drought, the die-off of millions of
ponderosa pines and fi re evacuations three
years running. Th e last year driving out
through fl ames on both sides of the road.
We then relocated to the beautiful coast of
Oregon.”
I’m in their nice home overlooking Alsea
during the slack tide. Sand bars ripple under
the big bridge joining two portions of the
coastline over the precarious sand spits and
intertidal zone that make this both a dramatic
place to live, and precarious (think ocean
surge vis-à-vis a tsunami).
Th ey spent time researching places, using a
climate change or global warming lens as part
of their search. For them, the last time fi res
hit their neck of the woods, North Fork (31
miles from the south entrance to Yosemite
National Park), they had all their important
DEEP
DIVE
papers in containers as they evacuated.
Th e hardy Ponderosa pines in their former
ecosystem were dropping like fl ies — creating
a huge tinder box for tens of thousands of
acres, putting home, roads and human and
animal life in danger.
To be more specifi c — Th ere are two
and a half million dead trees within the
131,000-acre national park. Dead trees are
a natural occurrence, but the higher number
of dead ones now are attributed to warmer
temperatures, drying periods, pine bark
beetles. Climate has changed dramatically.
For Mark and Anja, after 20 years living in
the area, they have the long view of how that
ecosystem is degrading and at risk due to the
results of climate change.
Enter the Beachhead of the
Siuslaw National Forest
I met Anja a few months ago at Pacifi c
Sourdough, where she had been working for
around fi ve months staffi ng the front counter
and now also making some of those yeasty
delicacies for which the Waldport bakery is
known.
My SOP is learning about the various
communities on the coast and digging deep
into people’s lives quickly since I have been
on the Central Oregon Coast barely one year.
Big mouth, big heart, big ideas. So, head-
fi rst I go into this life with my background
in radical politics, radical education, radical
sustainability and journalism. I like people.
It was clear to me both the owner of the
bakery, Katie, and Anja, were willing to riff
about plastics in the ocean, acidifi cation of
the Pacifi c and the ragged state of American
governance.
We swapped cards, and Anja’s piqued my
interest — she’s an artist with a background
in interior design. Artist-plus-envirogee-
plus-world traveler makes for good fodder for
my people profi les.
I’m in the house Mark and Anja bought
from the proceeds of selling their self-
designed custom-built airy home with two-
story view windows (eventually, a view made
up of gray, brown charred trees) sited at the
edge of the Yosemite National Park, which
was made famous by photographer Ansel
Adams, President Teddy Roosevelt and John
Muir, father of the Sierra Club.
She tells me Mark’s carpentry skills and
both of their sweat equity turned the outdated
and dysfunctional home into a wide-open
fl oor plan with amazing built-in shelves and
classy handmade doors and frames, as well as
a new kitchen.
Anja’s paintings not only adorn all the
walls — even the laundry room has three
4 • oregoncoastTODAY.com • facebook.com/oregoncoasttoday • December 20, 2019
XR #4 (Extinction Rebellion) Greta Thunberg by Anja Albosta
large acrylics hanging next above the laundry
items — but she has many leaning up on
walls that serve as a dining area a-la-painting
studio.
Art for Art’s Sake
Anja’s youthful years include growing up
in Germany and Switzerland, then Santa
Barbara. She ended up back in Switzerland as
an interior designer. “I had a fancy job, money,
two months off each year for a vacation. But I
wasn’t being fulfi lled.”
Th at life changed when she was in her
early 30s, propelling her to Yosemite for some
outdoor adventure. She met Mark, who was
rock climbing and asked Anja if she wanted
to try her hand at climbing escarpments and
the famous Half Dome.
Most of the rock now exposed in the
park is granitic, having been formed 210 to
80 million years ago as igneous diapirs six
miles below the surface. “Tis-sa-ack,” an
Ahwahnechee phrase for Cleft Rock, is Half
Dome’s pre-white man name.
She tells me that “coming to Yosemite
changed my life.” In more ways than just
her marital status, that is clear. Mark was
a mountaineering guide in the park, and
Anja threw in hard and fast as a painter
while working 40 miles away in Fresno as an
interior designer for clients who demanded
style, panache and quality craftsmanship.
Her art from the Yosemite years is in
their house — broad horizons, silhouetted
landscapes, with those rock features that
Yosemite is known for. She tells me that
much of the oil and water color creations ran
parallel with the work she did as an interior
designer — paintings that “went well” with
various home settings.
On her website, her work is categorized as
such — design; commissions and commercial
art; watercolors, oils; mixed media.
For people living on the Coast, and others
in our “green” Cascadia-Pacifi c Northwest,
her latest evolution in her work really puts
tread to the pavement when it comes to
“statement art”:
From 2016 to the present, her art “has
revolved around ‘balance’ and ‘the passing of
time.’” Her art cuts into new emotional and
societal space, for both the viewer and artist
herself, refl ecting her 52-years on Earth as an
artist in transition. Succinctly, we might say
she is looking for deeper meaning, a sense of
purpose and creative inspiration — “climate,
politics, religion, my own life.”
•••
Read on as Deep Dive continues at www.
oregoncoasttday.com
Paul Haeder is a writer living and working
in Lincoln County. He has two books coming
out, one a short story collection, “Wide Open Eyes:
Surfacing from Vietnam,” and a non-fi ction
book, “No More Messing Around: Th e Good, Bad
and Ugly of America’s Education System.”
To see more of Anja’s work, go to http://
anjaalbosta.com