By Kate Quach

Splatters of paint flurry across a navy-blue apron. A thin brush slips between fingers and swashes a kaleidoscope of colors on a canvas. With sleeves rolled to her elbows, Yukari Sakura leans close and settles a careful gaze over the page. While her focus never seems to lift, a smile splashes across her face as she sees her art pieces coming to life. 

Spikes, claws and stretching long necks. Dinosaurs pose, alive with striking colors, baring jagged sets of teeth and flaunting stripes down their backs. Pointed tails thrash amidst a speckled background while horns splay in every direction. Sakura’s vibrant dinosaurs, which once lay still on an art studio workspace, break away from the page and seem to burst through the doors of the California Academy of Sciences.

This summer, the Golden Gate Park museum revealed “The World’s Largest Dinosaurs” exhibition, featuring models of towering, prehistoric beasts of the sauropod species. Marveling through the exhibit, open until Jan. 21, 2024, visitors to San Francisco’s Academy of Sciences often cast their gazes upwards at the long-necked, herbivorous sauropods. 

Visitors’ hands hurry to interact with fossil replicas of larger-than-life bones. Their eyes peer into the intricacies of the giants’ unique digestive system, and faces brighten in awe of the life-size respiratory and heart networks. 

After gazing at the Jurassic creatures looming over their heads, museum guests find themselves in the merchandise store. Here, each shelf and rack is lined with custom items ranging from baby onesies to hoodies to tote bags — all adorned with Sakura’s artwork, in full color. 

Thirty-three-year-old Sakura, who grew up in the Sunset District, discovered her unshakable love for art when she was just 3 years old. While she experimented in different mediums and paints, a favored focus for her pieces quickly emerged. She loved animals. Trips with her parents to the California Academy of Sciences filled her childhood days as she waved to the butterflies, penguins and fishes with seemingly limitless energy. 

But one type of animal loomed above the rest — one which began its last march on the earth 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs became her passion. The long-extinct animals fueled Sakura’s fascination. Dinosaur toys romped around her, adventuring through her imagination as she watched “The Land Before Time” films on repeat. 

“My experience in the Academy when I was growing up as a child and watching movies about dinosaurs gave me many happy memories,” recalled Sakura. 

In 2011, after graduating high school through the San Francisco Special Education programs, Sakura found immediate support for her artistic abilities in an organization known as Creativity Explored. Established in 1983, the foundation opened its doors to artists with disabilities, providing opportunities for students to present their artwork in galleries and open for sale. Sakura immersed herself in art, refining her technique while staying true to her sharp perceptiveness of color and fondness for animals. For Sakura, she had Creativity Explored to thank for connecting her work with the California Academy of Sciences. 

“The Academy has had a long-standing partnership working with the developmentally disabled community,” said Carl Lieber, director of Guest Operations at the Academy. “I think the whole partnership came about through our desire and opportunity to tell a local story and highlight art from within the community.” 

When Sakura’s pieces became the main merchandise feature of The World’s Largest Dinosaurs, Lieber recalled a special feeling of enthusiasm rising within himself and his fellow coworkers, who were all captured by the colorful individuality of Sakura’s illustration. The Academy’s guests have held similar impressions. Since the exhibition’s introduction, Lieber has noticed visitors young and old gravitating towards the T-shirts and caps emblazoned with Sakura’s art. 

Early into the exhibit’s opening on May 26, Lieber and staff of the institute embraced Sakura with a welcoming tour. The museum director became filled with emotion watching Sakura’s face light up in pure joy when she saw her artwork displayed throughout the store. 

“I was trying to hide tears back,” Lieber said. “It was just awesome to see somebody realizing their creation is out in the world and seeing others in the public responding to their art.”

Back at Creativity Explored, Sakura’s mentors were equally as impressed by her capabilities. Laura Figa, a teaching artist at the studio, works one-on-one with artists with disabilities. In the workshop classes, Figa often finds Sakura absorbed in her independent style, researching endangered animal species and crafting paintings based off of her discoveries. 

“In her solitary practice, she is independently driven,” Figa said. 

This drive crystallizes in the messages the artist includes in her work: Sakura’s care for animals inspires her to incorporate awareness for endangered species in her pieces. 

“By researching the animals and knowing that they need help, we have to protect their habitats,” Sakura said. 

Peeking over Sakura’s shoulder, Figa would ask about the creatures emerging out of brushstrokes and onto her canvas. Sakura, with no hesitation, would share in-depth facts about the subjects of her paintings, from the animal’s region of origin to the meanings behind her color choice. 

“There’s always a story behind each work,” Figa said. “Nothing is arbitrary, everything has a background on what she decides to work on.”

Telling the story behind each work is no figure of speech. For Francis Kohler, lead teacher in Person-Centered Services at Creativity Explored, the true elements of Sakura’s pieces appear once he flips the artwork over. Behind, she fills the blank space with handwritten descriptions of the threatened animal for viewers to read. 

Sakura’s constant openness to inform others of vulnerable species radiates through her pieces.

“She has this encyclopedic knowledge of which animals are in the endangered category and all the delineations of how these animals are being kept track of,” Kohler said. 

Navigating through realistic pet portrait commissions to memorial events in U.S. history portrayed through cartoon-style, whimsical mythological creatures, Kohler noted his amazement in Sakura’s sweeping realm of artistic abilities. Now, in her work with the Academy’s The World’s Largest Dinosaurs exhibit, her pieces continue to “stand out from the rest,” adds Lieber.  

“Through her artistic lens, you’re seeing something that didn’t exist before,” Kohler said. “For Yukari, the sky’s the limit.”