Skyline College Art Gallery

Mapping Sense of Things

Daniel Southard + Amy Yoshitsu

September 26 - November 20, 2026 | Opening Receptions: September 26 & 28

What is at risk when we prioritize convenience and development over more sustainable futures? Who is displaced, and what is lost? How can we understand a place through ancestral perspectives? In Mapping Sense of Things, artists Daniel Southard and Amy Yoshitsu approach these questions uniquely. What ties them together is a focus on individual action, like documenting, navigating, assembling, and planning for an unknown future. In doing so, they remind us that we can make impactful choices in the face of pressure.

Whether actually or figuratively, both artists manipulate place and space to remind us of how we got here. Southard writes messages for the future on old-growth redwood posts. They were produced during the European settlement of the West, which involved the felling of two-thousand year old redwood trees. Once Southard marks the posts with messages, he buries them in the Great Basin with the intention of creating future fossils. Yoshitsu turns familiar Bay Area locations like the Carquinez Bridge and the Port of Oakland into something strange. The resulting photo-based sculptures and images are simultaneously recognizable and puzzling. The focus on bridges, ports, and intersections point to how overarching systems like capitalism create the world we navigate everyday. 

The development of places is intimately tied with the experience of time. Yoshitsu’s sculptures include images of the city, but their 3D assemblages are not meant to last forever. This reminds us that despite the solidity of concrete and rebar, nothing lasts forever. Southard deals with the question of what will remain long after the last human has expired. Will the lasting traces of human activity reflect our hopes and dreams? Or will they be evidence of a species that failed to live sustainably? 

The artworks in Mapping Sense of Things remind us that there are consequences to our actions. Collective self-reflection reveals that though we are tiny bleeps in the vast cosmic expanse, we have power. Our actions matter.

About the Gallery

Skyline College’s Art Gallery is an artistic venue with programming that reflects the cultural diversity of the Skyline College community. Admission is free!

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