Mark Baugh-Sasaki

Confluence
Family archive materials, wood, plywood, stones gathered from the American river, sound, and video projection
16” x 168” x 144”
2024

Confluence explores my family’s relationship to the landscape through farming, how it shaped us, the loss of connection and reconnection. For this project I wanted to work with my family archive. It included many documents, photos, and objects from my family’s history. After going through it many times, I was drawn to the documents surrounding our family’s farm. For me the documents and objects represented a tight knit community whose livelihood was tied to their relationship to the land. I became interested in how the role the landscape shaped my family, whether it was a place of safety, comfort, and home or of dislocation and trauma during their time at Tulelake Segregation Center during forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. These spaces became vessels for theirs and many others’ experiences, emotions, and memories. The archive has allowed me to lift the lid and to glimpse inside.

During my research for this project my father has been losing his memory and in doing so I feel like I am losing the connection to my family and their legacy. Yet, at the same time I have reconnected with family still living the Rocklin/Loomis area of California. They live in the house they built surrounded by fruit trees in the middle of a subdivision that was built when they sold the farm in the late 90’s. Their connection to the land and the continuing of traditions tied to it and willingness to share them with me has helped me reform my connection to part of who I am.

The title Confluence is taken from the location on the American river where the North and South Fork of merge together. The river acts as metaphor for the merging of personal, family, and community experiences and history within the landscape to create a space that holds the past and has allowed me to access part of who I am through it. Using the visual language of Japanese garden design and the display of Bonsai and Suiseki, combined with objects and materials from my family archive, and video and audio recorded throughout the Loomis/Rocklin area I am creating a garden of memory. A place where one can reflect on personal, community, or human experiences and how rooted they are in our surroundings.