San Francisco sculptor's internment exhibit explores connections

“Between Memory and Landscape” opens this week at La Sierra University’s Brandstater Gallery with an artist’s reception and talk at 6 p.m. on Sun., Feb. 25.

The exhibit’s centerpiece work is a 700-pound angled wood frame that is 4 feet deep, 12 feet wide and 12 feet high. The work is in the form of a single-family barrack used in the internment camps and is the visual language, Baugh-Sasaki says, “of the Japanese incarceration, its landscape and its embedded histories.” The exhibit addresses the “nuanced and complicated relationship” of links between human events, experiences and landscapes with the shaping of personal identity and the connection to surroundings, he says in an artist statement.

The exhibit is influenced by Baugh-Sasaki’s work at Tule Lake Segregation Center where his Japanese father at age 14 was imprisoned along with other family members. The floor of the skeletal frame of the barrack installation in the exhibit is covered with earth collected from Tulelake. The segregation center in Northern California became the largest of 10 War Relocation Authority camps in California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming which were used to imprison more than 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans beginning in 1942.

“I am using the barrack as a symbol or container that represents a collection of experiences that begin to make up both me, my dad, and the site itself,” Baugh-Sasaki said. “I’m not only interested in talking about the Japanese imprisonment during World War II, but also to talk about the other narratives that are also present in the landscape, such as the displacement of the Modoc tribe in the 1870’s and re-contextualize it in modern times.”

Baugh-Sasaki arrives at La Sierra in part through funding from the Brandstater Endowment. He and Brandstater Gallery Director Tim Musso connected two years ago through fellow art colleague, painter Josh Hagler who also exhibited his work at Brandstater Gallery and taught painting to art students.

Musso, who is an assistant art professor at La Sierra, took art students to visit Baugh-Sasaki at his studio a year ago. Prior to this exhibit’s Feb. 25 artist’s reception, he is taking La Sierra art students to a desert art workshop with Baugh-Sasaki at the Alabama Hills Fossil Falls geologic area and the Manzanar National Historic Site, one of the 10 World War II Japanese internment camp locations.

Baugh-Sasaki holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Carnegie Mellon University and a Master of Fine Arts from Stanford University. He has extensive experience as a solo and group art exhibitioner including shows through ProArts and Krowswork galleries in Oakland, public installation events at Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley urban park in San Francisco, the Coulter Art Gallery at Stanford, Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, and Thatcher Gallery at the University of San Francisco.

Baugh-Sasaki’s list of awards includes Stanford Graduate Fellow, Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito; a SECA Award nomination from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; a Cadogan Award from The San Francisco Foundation; a La Napoule Art Foundation Residency, Château de La Napoule, France; and an Honorary James Irvine Foundation Fellowship.

His sculpture and installation work use reclaimed wood, found stone, steel and cast metal. His art combines his research, observations and experiences of the intersection between the natural and the man-made to create “fantastical objects or environments that illustrate the changing systems, interactions, adaptations and altered landscapes within this new realm,” he says in his statement.

Baugh-Sasaki grew up in San Francisco where his father later in life met his mother, a native of Los Angeles. Baugh-Sasaki took many trips during his childhood to state and national parks which influenced his artistic focus. A stint in Pittsburgh, Pa. in 2000 to study at Carnegie Mellon, however, had particular impact.

“When I got to Pittsburgh I was in a completely new environment,” he said, “one where the industrial landscape had once overrun the more natural environment. I became entranced by this landscape and the relationships within it. I was drawn to using industrial processes like welding and foundry work and combing them with natural processes and materials.

Most recently in my work I’ve come to an understanding that we are all part of the same ecological system. It’s not about nature and humans being separate. It’s about our sense of place and how we define our surroundings.”

Art has been a lifelong interest and natural career choice for Baugh-Sasaki, one strongly supported by his parents.

“I’ve always pursued art for as long as I can remember. I started out drawing, which quickly evolved into a love for photography. I also dabbled in sculpture during my youth,” he said. “My first introduction to sculpture was through a workshop at my elementary school given by Ruth Asawa. She was instrumental in my initial interest making art. For me it really didn’t even seem like a choice I made. It was something that I always knew I would do and follow.”

Brandstater Gallery is located in the Visual Arts Center on Middle Campus Drive. Admission to the gallery and artist’s reception is free. La Sierra University is located at 4500 Riverwalk Parkway, Riverside. For further information call 951-785-2170. A campus map is available at lasierra.edu/campus-map/.