 In 1978, Yamagata moved to Los Angeles and started to use bright silkscreen colors in his work.In the 1980s, he produced work for the Air & Space Bicentennial (1983), the 1984 Olympics, the hundredth memorial anniversary of the Statue of Liberty (1986), the Australia foundation memorial (1988), and the hundredth anniversary of the Eiffel Tower (1988).In 1988 he produced an official portrait of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and started a series of work about golf in collaboration with Jack Nicklaus.