Emmy Lou Packard may not be a name that you recognize immediately, but a visit to the Richmond Art Center’s new exhibit on the artist will quickly correct that.
The exhibit Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience (through August 20 and free to the public) showcases and recognizes the life and timeless works of the Bay Area artist, activist, and visionary in the first show since her death in 1998.
The exhibit Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience, at the Richmond Art Center, showcases and recognizes the life and timeless works of the Bay Area artist, activist, and visionary in the first show since her death in 1998. Photo: Anna Hoch-Kenney
While Packard was never a household name during her lifetime, she managed to dance continuously just beyond fame’s reach. Packard is most often recognized for her proximity to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo—they were her mentors, supporters, and close friends. Packard, who showed an early passion for painting, was introduced to Diego Rivera as a child while living in Mexico with her family temporarily. Upon looking over some of her work, Rivera offered to do weekly portfolio reviews with her.
This chance introduction was the start of a great creative mentorship between Rivera and Packard and shaped much of Packard’s future career in the arts. She went on to study art at UC Berkeley and San Francisco Art Institute before reuniting with Rivera both as his studio assistant back in Mexico (during which she lived with Rivera and Kahlo and documented moments of their lives through photography) and as his chief assistant for the Pan American Unity mural he painted for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1940.
Diego Rivera & Emmy Lou Packard painting for the Golden Gate International Exposition, on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, 1938-40, Photograph Gelatin silver print, vintage. Courtesy of Throckmorton Gallery and Richmond Art Center
As chief assistant for the project, Packard thoroughly documented the process of creating the mural. Pan American Unity permanently resides at CCSF, but it is currently on display at the SFMOMA; Packard’s notes proved to be critical in understanding the mural, how it was made, and how to safely move it.
Emmy Lou Packard, Peace is a Human Right, 1949, Linocut. Courtesy of Ian Thompson and Muna Coobtee, and Richmond Art Center
The exhibit at the Richmond Art Center, however, makes it obvious that there is much more to Packard’s work than her time as an assistant to Diego Rivera. The gallery consists of prints, paintings, sketches, and photographs made by Packard, switching between several common themes such as nature, childhood, work, and political activism, particularly against war and racism.
During World War ll, Packard created cartoons and drawings encouraging the end of segregation and supporting voting rights for the Fore ‘n’ Aft newspaper at the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, CA. Her political feelings continued to make appearances in her work and are particularly notable for their timelessness and current relevance.
A satirical print titled “Someone has to Suffer, Madame,” depicts a pig in a business suit with contracts bulging out of his pockets, comforting a mother while explaining “In the event of war, you lose sons. In the event of peace, I lose money.” Another print, created during the McCarthy era, shows two men in suits grabbing hold of George Washington, the caption below reading “We’ve discovered that this guy was an insurgent leader, Boss—What’ll we do now?”
It left me thinking of the irony in that, despite activism and government criticism being a fundamental reason for our nation’s existence, those who voice their dissent are continually considered a threat by our government.
Packard later became a mentor and activist in the Mission mural community, and also led the movement to save the Mendocino headlands—a place that appeared in many of her prints—from development.
In a nod to their collaborative creative relationship, Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience was timed to perfectly align with SFMOMA’s exhibit on Diego Rivera. And if you happen to visit the Pan American Unity mural, keep an eye open for a blonde Emmy Lou Packard painting in a red sweater. Her name still may not be as recognizable as those of her colleagues, but the power of her art and life’s work is undeniable.
Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience will be on display at the Richmond Art Center until August 20. A closing reception will be held from 12-2 on August 20, with tortilla printing by The Great Tortilla Conspiracy.
If people are familiar with the name Emmy Lou Packard, it is mostly because of her long alliance with the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo.
But what’s clear from the Richmond exhibit – open at the Richmond Arts Center until August 20 – is that Packard produced a wealth of work apart from her role as Rivera’s assistant. The show of linoleum prints, photographs of murals she did on her own and some paintings, illustrate a reach far beyond her association with Rivera.
But, unlike the Mexican muralist, Packard shied away from press and self-promotion.
It’s work defined by a simplicity that captures the quotidian. In one linoleum print a man stands in an overgrown artichoke field. His hat covers his eyes as he picks the prickly bud from its stem. The field closes in on him. All sense of time is lost.
Emmy Lou Packard’s “The Artichoke Picker.” Photo Courtesy of Richmond Arts Center.
“She had a personality, but it wasn’t about her,” said Packard’s former student and documentary filmmaker Rick Tejada-Flores in comparing her to the larger than life figure of Rivera. For Packard, he said, “It was about her work and what she wanted her work to do.”
Tejada-Flores co-curated the exhibit with artist and author Robbin Légère Henderson, who grew up with one of Emmy Lou Packard’s prints in her home.
Although Packard, who died in 1998 at age 83, had displayed her work in galleries, she was more concerned with making her art accessible to a wider audience, Tejada-Flores said.
“There’s a guy in Davis who knew Emmy Lou quite well toward the end of her life. And she was not making art. She was in a nursing home. … So he said, ‘Well, Emmy Lou, let’s do a show of your work.’ And she said, ‘You can do it after I die,’” Tejada-Flores recalled.
While Packard has largely been forgotten except for the time she spent with Rivera, she has always had a strong following among artists in the Mission and in 1973 advised the trio of young artists who painted a mural at the Bank of America at 23rd and Mission streets.
“She’s an unsung heroine in the arts,” said Mission District muralist Juana Alicia Araiza. “I knew her until the end of her life … she gave me one of her prints as a wedding present.”
Others credit Packard with promoting Mission District artists. “I feel like Emmy Lou Packard was one of the first to fight for the Latino District and brought awareness to the art in the Latino District,” said Mission-raised artist and activist Lucia Gonzalez Ippolito.
An Artist of Social Consciousness meets Diego Rivera
Packard was born on April 15, 1914 in El Centro, in California’s Imperial Valley. Her lineage can be traced back to County Carlow, Ireland – where her great-grandfather was a bearer of dispatches in the Irish Rebellion. From childhood, Packard was surrounded by family conversations on communism and socialism.
“I had not read Marxism (not until I was 25). But my father’s explanation that ‘capitalism fosters war, socialism suffers as a result of war’ kind of stuck with me as a guiding principle,” Packard explained in her oral history interview with Louise Gilbert.
In the 1920s, Packard and her family traveled to Mexico City; in November 1928, Packard’s mother introduced Rivera to her young daughter, kickstarting Packard’s career under one of the great Mexican muralists. Every other week, Rivera would meet with Packard to give her art critiques.
“I was surprised at the great character, the sensitivity of tones and the objective and subjective truth of the paintings of Mexican life that this North American child had done,” Rivera once said of Packard. “She was a blonde, melancholy little girl. With the face of a French gothic angel plucked from the reliefs of Chartres. … Embarrassed and shy, bright and a little savage, she had all the character of the country in which she was born.”
Packard eventually moved back to the United States and went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley. She reunited with Rivera in 1940 when the great Mexican muralist asked Packard to be his chief assistant on the Pan American Unity mural, which is currently on display at the SF MoMa. It is a sprawling vision of cultural unity in North America in which Packard appears on the left side standing just above Charlie Chaplin.
Diego Rivera and his assistant painting the “Pan American Unity” mural. Emmy Lou Packard can be found in the mural holding a sketchbook and wearing heels and a sweater. Photo Courtesy of the San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library.
Once the mural was finished, Packard returned to Mexico to live with Rivera and Kahlo, where she deepened her friendship with the two artists. In 1941, Kahlo and Rivera would help Packard open her first one-woman show.
Rivera once said that “[a]ll art is propaganda” and art was his weapon. For Packard, art served a similar function, but her images weren’t as overtly political as Rivera’s. “She was able to say complex things with simple, solid images,” Mission District artist Miranda Bergman said.
When Packard moved to San Francisco in 1941, World War II was at the forefront of the world’s mind and guided much of Packard’s artistic and political work during this time. She painted for an exhibit that highlighted the extra burden women faced during the war, created art on the history of union movements for the California Labor School and joined the staff of the Kaiser shipyard paper Fore ‘n Aft.
“My first trip out to the Richmond shipyards was in the early evening, and I still remember the excitement of the big yards working at night.” Packard recalled in her oral history interview.
There she found all classes of Americans that she later described in the oral history as Americans “united and enthusiastically engaged in a struggle to end fascism in Europe.” Packard created hundreds of drawings and cartoons of the people in the shipyards for Fore ‘n Aft, some of which are installed in the Richmond show.
But much of the Richmond show focuses on the linoleum prints that Packard began making in the 1950s. She liked the medium because ordinary people could afford the cheap prints.
“When I think of Emmy Lou, right away, an image comes to mind of a merry-go-round,” Bergman said, referring to one of Packard’s prints of children on a merry-go-round. “The print has been in my home ever since I was born. It imagined a future of racial unity and showed children of all colors playing on the merry-go-round. She was visionary in terms of imagining a future of peace and unity.”
Emmy Lou Packard’s “Merry Go Round; Freedom Now!” poster. Photo Courtesy of Annex Galleries.
Packard’s work circulated far beyond the Bay, with pieces reprinted in other countries like the Soviet Union. “Her art represented her heart, her beliefs,” Bergman said.
But not everyone was on board with Packard’s left-leaning beliefs.
“One morning, at 11, there was a knock on my door, and when I opened the door two men in gray suits were there,” Packard recalled in her oral history interview. The two men were from the FBI and asserted that they had “absolute proof” that Packard was a communist, to which Packard responded that the two men had “no such proof.”
“Have you ever read Karl Marx?” the two men in suits asked Packard.
“Of course. I took economic history at UC [Berkeley]. Marx is part of economic history,” Packard said.
“Did you UNDERSTAND it?”
“Of course. Haven’t you ever read it?”
“WE’LL ask the questions!”
Packard and Nature
Another portion of the Richmond show’s prints come from those she made after moving to Mendocino in 1959. The prints focus on the sprawling sea life and water towers of the area.
Packard’s strong interest in Mendocino’s nature also made her an advocate in opposing construction that would disrupt the area’s coastal bluffs. Her organizing efforts were successful and led to the creation of the Mendocino Headlands State Park, where there is a plaque that honors her efforts to save the coastal bluffs.
“People didn’t appreciate [the bluffs] until it was in danger of being lost,” Tejada-Flores explained.
Emmy Lou Packard’s “Menodocino Coast.” Photo Courtesy of Rick Tejada-Flores
Finding Packard in the Mission
After spending 14 years in Mendocino, Packard returned to San Francisco in 1973 and began to help with the Bank of America mural.
“She didn’t pick up a brush, but she would come over and correct our brushstrokes,” Rios recalled. “We were very fortunate to have her as a technical advisor. She also took us over to City College to show us her role in working on the Pan-American Unity Mural.”
Elaine Chu, co-founder of Twin Walls Murals Company, discovered Packard’s blocks for print-making one day at Precita Eyes Murals on 24th Street. Chu was working under Precita’s founder Susan Cervantes at the time, who explained to Chu the strong relationship she had with Packard.
“She really supported community murals because she saw the beauty of the community in the Mission,” Chu explained. “There is a very rich history that Emmy helped foster.”
Bergman echoed Chu’s sentiment.
“I think about her as an elder artist too because she kept going until she couldn’t,” Bergman said. “I’d do anything to make people familiar with her work because it’s resonant with today…the struggles for peace as a human right.”
CAROLYN STEIN: Intern reporter. Carolyn grew up in Los Angeles. She previously served as a desk editor for her college newspaper The Stanford Daily. When she’s not reporting, you can find her going on an unnecessarily long walk.
Top image: Emmy Lou Packard poses for a photo with Frida Kahlo. The two artists had a strong relationship. Photo Courtesy of Rick Tejada-Flores.
Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience is a stunning, if overdue, retrospective exhibition of an artist largely ignored in her lifetime by critics — even though she worked directly with Diego Rivera, mentoring and inspiring a generation of Bay Area muralists in her late years. She died in 1998 at age 83.
A southern California native whose father worked as an agronomist for a time in Mexico, Packard began studying with Rivera at age 12. She later lived with Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico after her husband’s tragic death and became the muralist’s principal assistant on the Pan American Unitymural for the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island. On loan from City College of San Francisco, the mural is currently on display at SFMOMA, with Packard among those depicted in it.
Illustration for Kaiser Shipyards newspaper (1944-6)
The visually striking, morale-boosting exhibit at the Richmond Art Center couldn’t be timelier, not only with a newly opened Rivera retrospective at SFMOMA but for the powerful way in which it reasserts progressive values. Working at Kaiser Shipyard’s newspaper, Fore ‘n’ Aft in Richmond during World War II, Packard created illustrations calling for racial unity and for workers to exercise their right and responsibility to vote. Other, larger black-and-white linocut prints portray a resolute Fredrick Douglass and a satirically reimagined George Washington held by two G-men for his embrace of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The latter print is captioned: “We’ve discovered that this guy was an insurgent leader, Boss – What’ll we do now?!” These images show Packard pushing back against racial tensions at wartime defense plants and the repression of civil liberties.
Someone Has to Suffer, Madam, 1950s, mixed, media linocut with collage, 32 x 21 inches
A mixed-media linocut collage titled Someone Has to Suffer, Madam, portrays a businessman with a pig’s head, meaty left hand outstretched, war contracts in his back pocket, and right arm encircling the shoulders of a grief-stricken woman. The political cartoon, made in the 1950s, incorporates a torn newspaper clipping headlined: “Stock Market Dive Worst in 18 Months” with a subhead, “Worries Outweigh Cease-Fire,” adjacent to another article titled “Peace News and Market.” It sharply underscores the still-present contradiction of a bullish stock market juxtaposed against the toll of human sacrifice and suffering. Rivera and Kahlo astutely dubbed their fragile-looking guest “Emmy Lucha,” Spanish for fight. (She also led the fight to save Mendocino Headlands, now a state park.)
The heart of the show lies in Packard’s large, bold, colorful, and technically masterful prints showing strawberry pickers, artichoke harvesters, crab fishermen, welders, Italian and Chinese produce market vendors – all evoking California’s people and the land. In Net Menders, for example, we see curvilinear, whiplash-like lines juxtaposed against delicate, broken-line patterning and strong hands. Swirling clouds above foreshortened row crops dwarf a Lilliputian field crew in Landscape Near Half Moon Bay, while Merry-Go-Round pictures a multi-racial group of kids, limbs flung akimbo. Together, the 78 works on view express joy, exuberance, anger and fulfillment in natural settings that frame human efforts. We also see the waste of war. Peace is a Human Right (1949) shows three children with a sunflower and dove, an iconic image during the Vietnam War that sadly speaks to the present moment.
Strawberry Pickers Near Pajaro, 1967/1986, linocut, 18 x 14 inches
The exhibit, three years in the making by curators Robbin Légère Henderson and Rick Tejada-Flores, is supported by an informative, beautifully illustrated brochure in which they ask: “Why has this powerful artist been so overlooked?” The answer lies partly in the political, cultural and visual art landscape in the U.S. following World War II, shifting away from the Social Realism of the New Deal toward Abstract Expressionism. After the war, most art critics tended to disparage or ignore figurative, socially expressive work by left-wing artists in the U.S. who were sympathetic to working people; these included Ben Shawn, Jacob Lawrence and Alice Neel (whose work is currently on display at the de Young Museum), as well as Rivera.
In addition to changing aesthetic preferences, women were displaced from the workplace, forced to leave the male-gendered jobs they occupied during the war, as veterans came home to reclaim their work. Women weren’t expected to compete, “even in the arts,” note the curators. “Packard’s gender, her politics, the genre she chose and the era she lived in combined to exclude her from serious consideration by guardians of public taste.”
Tejada-Flores, a documentary filmmaker exploring art and politics, met Packard as an art student in 1963 and accepted an invitation to print graphics for her at the gallery in Mendocino. He became a lifelong friend. He and Robbins, a former art museum director and curator whose own prints champion labor organizing, teamed to gather the generous assemblage of drawings, prints, photos and ephemera on loan from a long list of institutional and private collections (including their own).
Net Menders, 1950s, linocut 25 x 21 inches
Packard’s “artistic mastery and commitment to peace and justice inspired admiration and activism” in her late years, note the curators, including that of San Francisco artist Susan Cervantes, founder of Precita Eyes Muralists Association and the Latinx women of Mujeres Muralistas, who painted the gorgeous, larger-than-life murals on the Women’s Building in the mid-1990s.
Absent the critical recognition withheld in her lifetime, it’s rewarding that this show resonates loudly. Packard’s art of conscience calls to us still: to recognize the worth of laborers, realize inclusiveness, ignite solidarity, appreciate the bountiful harvests of California’s coast and fields, and celebrate the natural beauty of the land.
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Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience @ Richmond Art Center through August 20, 2022. Public events include an artists’ panel, “Rebel Art: Emmy Lou Packard’s Legacy” (July 29) and a film screening of “Rivera in America” in which she is interviewed (August 11).
About the author: Diana Scott is a San Francisco-based writer whose dance, theatre, and arts reviews, and pieces on architecture and the urban environment, have appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the San Francisco Examiner (“Habitat” section), The Advocate weeklies (Connecticut), the Hartford Courant, the New Haven Register, Metropolis Magazine and the New York Times. Her Bay Guardian story, “Where have all the pay phones gone?” won a 2007 first-place award for a technology story from the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club. Inspired to report on the dual façade Women’s Building mural-in-progress in 1995, she interviewed the women creating it, Las Mujeres Muralistas, and their mentor, Emmy Lou Packard.
Top image: Emmy Lou Packard with Frida Kahlo in Mexico City photographed by Diego Rivera, 1941
Bay Area artist and mural advocate Emmy Lou Packard is the subject of a timely exhibition at the Richmond Art Center titled “Emmy Lou Packard, Artist of Conscience,” which centers her place in art history.
A native Californian who studied art at UC Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1930s, Packard went on to work as famed Mexican artist Diego Rivera’s studio assistant, eventually living with him and his wife, Frida Kahlo. Packard became the chief assistant on Rivera’s “Pan American Unity” mural in 1940 created for the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island.
During World War II, Packard worked at the Fore ‘n’ Aft, the Kaiser shipyard’s newspaper in Richmond, and was known for drawing illustrations supporting causes like racial integration and voting rights. Packard also worked as a printmaker. One of her signature images, “Peace Is a Human Right,” depicts an Asian child, a Black child and a white child seated together around a sunflower; it became known around the world.
Packard was a pivotal supporter of the Mission mural movement and advocated for the preservation of the Coit Tower murals in the later 20th century. She was also a key figure in saving the Mendocino headlands.
Packard’s exhibition, curated by Robbin Légère Henderson and Rick Tejada-Flores, will be on view at the same time as “Diego Rivera’s America” and the “Pan American Unity” mural at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
“Emmy Lou Packard, Artist of Conscience”: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday. Through Aug. 20. Free. Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave., Richmond,. 510-620-6772. https://richmondartcenter.org/
Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com
Top image: Emmy Lou Packard and Frida Kahlo in a photograph taken by Diego Rivera. Packard is the subject of the exhibition “Emmy Lou Packard, Artist of Conscience” at the Richmond Art Center.
Interview with Richmond Art Center’s curators of the Emmy Lou Packard exhibition
Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience Exhibition: June 22 – August 20, 2022 Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804 Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 10 am – 4 pm Exhibition and events are free to the public
The new exhibition at Richmond Art Center, ‘Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience,’ is curated by Robbin Légère Henderson and Rick Tejada-Flores. The curators spoke with Richmond Progressive Alliance on Monday, June 27.
Hello! Introduce yourselves and tell us how you came to curate the Emmy Lou Packard retrospective currently on view at Richmond Art Center.
Rick Tejada-Flores: I met Emmy Lou Packard in the 1960s. She was an artist, primarily a printmaker, but she also painted and created murals. I was an art student at the time, and she asked me to gallery sit for her and she taught me how to print artist editions. Later when I became a filmmaker, Packard assisted me when I made a film on Diego Rivera in the United States. When Packard died in 1998, she was known to a small circle, but no one had seen her art in many, many years. We thought that now is an ideal time to bring her back to the public.
Robbin Légère Henderson: I am currently spending most of my time making my own art, a combination of text and drawing to create graphic narratives, but I spent more than 30 years as a curator and director of various community art centers promoting the work of artists from the Bay Area and beyond. Rick and I have both admired the work of Emmy Lou Packard for decades. My parents acquired some of her prints that were displayed in our home. When Rick invited me to help him organize this show, I was eager to help him shine a light on this powerful, but long overlooked woman artist. Packard was friends with people who were friends of my parents in the Bay Area, so I was aware of her as a real person—not just a remote figure.
Who was Emmy Lou Packard? Why do you think people today might be interested to learn about her story and see her artwork?
Robbin: Packard was primarily a printmaker and painter, but she also experimented with many mediums including cast concrete, plastic, and mosaic. She turned to printmaking because she wanted people of limited means to be able to acquire original art and multiples can serve that purpose. Packard objected to many of the issues of inequality—racial and gender discrimmination, low wages, and the use of public money to support wars for the benefit of capitalism—that continue to confront us today.
Rick: When Packard was twelve her parents took her to Mexico, because her father was an agronomist working for the Mexican Government on irrigation issues, and her mother introduced her to Diego Rivera, the famous muralist. When they met, Rivera decided she was a really talented young girl so he gave her art lessons. So imagine, you’re twelve years old and Diego Rivera is teaching you how to paint! This sort of set the direction for Packard’s life. When Rivera came to the United States to paint a big mural at Treasure Island in 1940, he brought her on as his chief assistant. Emmy Lou Packard is actually depicted as a central figure in the mural—the artist in the red sweater standing at an easel. I think this connection with Rivera formed her political and artistic vision as well. [Rivera’s Pan American Unity mural is currently on view at SFMOMA.]
Robbin: Packard’s relationship to the great muralist and painter, Diego Rivera, is an example of how older artists can mentor and inspire those coming after them.
Rick: Later, in the 1980s, she herself mentored a whole generation of artists in the Mission District of San Francisco, supporting the new emergence of murals, and political and social art. So that’s a really important side of her that people don’t really know about. It was very important to her that whatever you do, it is vital to pass it on to the next generation.
Emmy Lou Packard has an important connection to Richmond. Tell us about Packard’s work at the Richmond shipyards.
Robbin: Emmy Lou Packard worked at the Kaiser Shipyards as an editor and artist for the in-house newspaper, Fore ‘n Aft. The work exposed her to the involvement of women and people of color in the defense industry during World War II. She identified with the solidarity that working together can create, and also the double burden of working women who also care for their children. Her editorials described working conditions and her cartoons represented workers’ lives—the night shift, the commute, women cooking wearing hard hats—this no doubt resonated with many readers. Her cartoons also advised vaccination against communicable diseases and the importance of voting. All of these concerns are still relevant.
Rick: For the exhibition at Richmond Art Center we were lucky to loan pages from Packard’s personal scrapbook that includes her newsprint illustrations from Fore ‘n Aft.
Last question, was Emmy Lou Packard’s artwork political? How did she express her progressive views?
Robbin: Packard’s work appealed to people for its beautiful color, strong design and its narrative content. She promoted the dignity of labor, celebrated the beauty of the natural environment and progressive political principles such as peace, racial diversity, and the joy of children. Usually, her progressive perspectives were implied, rather than overtly expressed. The urgency of environmental protection is implicit in her evocation of our rural landscape and abundant sea life. Her appreciation for California’s workers, especially those who provide our food, is reflected in the bent backs that tie their individual labor to the land that sustains us. Sometimes though, her work offers a challenge to power. For example, her famous poster “Peace is a Human Right” and some of her topical cartoons express those ideas. Packard’s advocacy for the environment helped to preserve the Mendocino headlands which is now a state park, instead of a wall of homes and hotels limiting public access. Packard’s efforts 60 years ago, reminds me of today’s Richmond residents’ fight to preserve the wild landscape of Point Molate from development.
Rick: Packard’s art is political, but in subtle ways. She celebrates workers in their daily lives and not on the picket lines, in the grace of their interaction with nature instead of the constant struggle between the human person and machine; worker and boss. She felt that people need art as part of their daily lives, but couldn’t afford to buy paintings; so she created her beautiful, low cost images for them to hang on their walls. What looks like non-political work is deeply rooted in her politics of equality and her belief in the importance of art in daily life.
Illustration for Kaiser Shipyards newspaper ‘Fore ’n Aft’ (1944-46), Emmy Lou Packard. Newspaper. Courtesy of John Natsoulas Gallery and Richmond Art Center
Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of ConscienceExhibition and Public Programs Schedule Exhibition and events are free to attend. All programs will take place at Richmond Art Center.
Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience Curated by Robbin Légère Henderson and Rick Tejada-Flores Exhibition Dates: June 22 – August 20, 2022
How Emmy Lou Packard Made Her Prints Demonstration of Packard’s press by master printer Art Hazelwood Event Date: Saturday, July 16, 12pm-2pm
Rebel Art: Emmy Lou Packard’s Legacy Artist panel moderated by art historian, curator and writer Terezita Romo Event Date: Friday, July 29, 6pm-7:30pm
Screening of Rivera In America (featuring interviews with Emmy Lou Packard) Film by Rick Tejada-Flores Event Date: Thursday, August 11, 6:30pm-8:30pm
Closing Reception with The Great Tortilla Conspiracy Featuring edible art inspired by Emmy Lou Packard Event Date: Saturday, August 20, 12pm-2pm
Emmy Lou Packard at Richmond Shipyards (1944). Photographer Unknown. Photograph. Courtesy of Richmond Art Center
About the Curators
Rick Tejada-Flores is a documentary filmmaker whose works have explored art and politics, including profiles of Diego Rivera, Jasper Johns, Jose Clemente Orozco and Cesar Chavez. They have been shown on PBS, Sundance Channel, History en Español, and Channel 4 UK, and at the National Museum of American History and British Museum. Tejada-Flores printed for Packard in Mendocino, and remained a friend for the rest of her life.
Robbin Légère Henderson organized exhibitions focusing on art and politics as director and curator of Berkeley Art Center for 20 years. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Henderson has served as curator at Intersection for the Arts and was a co-founder of Southern Exposure Gallery. For 10 years she has freelanced as a curator and speaker on her illustrated history of a woman labor organizer in the 20th century.
About Richmond Art Center
Richmond Art Center has been sharing art and creating with the community since 1936. Our programs encompass classes, exhibitions and events at our facility in downtown Richmond, as well as off-site activities that bring free, high-quality art making experiences to WCCUSD schools and community partners. richmondartcenter.org
For more information contact: Amy Spencer, amy@richmondartcenter.org
Top image: Landscape Near Half Moon Bay (1950s), Emmy Lou Packard. Linocut with hand coloring. Courtesy of Donald Cairns and Richmond Art Center
Julieta Kusnir spoke with curator Rick Tejada-Flores about the exhibition Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience at Richmond Art Center on June 14, 2022.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity.
Julieta Kusnir: You’re listening to La Raza Chronicles, I’m Julieta Kusnir and I’m so happy to have on the line with me Rick Tejada Flores. Many people know Rick from his filmmaking, he’s produced incredible documentaries that serve to be a history of so many important movements, everything from looking at farm worker struggles to looking at his own personal journey understanding the context of Bolivia’s revolution through his own family story. So Rick it’s so wonderful to have you here on the line with us. Thank you so much for joining us.
Rick Tejada Flores: It’s wonderful too. It’s nice to talk about things to people who care about them.
Julieta: So you actually have a really exciting exhibit that is opening up soon and it’s related to Emmy Lou Packard’s life, who was a California post-war activist, muralist, painter, many many many other things. But let’s just start there – a lot of people maybe don’t know about her work – why don’t you give us some context. Who was she and what was happening in the world while she was most active?
Rick: Well, she was a great artist and I think her art career started when she was twelve. Her parents took her to Mexico because her dad was an agronomist working for the Mexican Government on irrigation issues and her mother introduced her to Diego Rivera, the famous muralist. And they met and Diego Rivera decided this is a really talented young girl – she was twelve at the time – so I’m going to give her art lessons. So imagine, you’re twelve years old and Diego Rivera is teaching you how to paint. This sort of set the direction for her life. She grows up, studies art, and then Diego comes to the United States to paint a big mural at Treasure Island in 1940 and he brings her on; she’s his chief assistant on the mural. So I think that connection with Rivera formed her political vision and her artistic vision.
Rick: After the mural she goes back and lives with Diego and Frida in Mexico. She’s a very good friend of theirs. Then she comes back and starts her own artistic path. It’s the end of World War Two and she goes to work at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond as an artist drawing illustrations about integration, women in the workforce, the importance of health and vaccinations. And that sort of gets her started as an artist and as someone who can make a social connection. After that, she’s a very political person, but she focuses on ordinary people and ordinary life. She doesn’t paint pictures of demonstrations or people with guns. She celebrates humanity. She did a wonderful series of images – she’s a printmaker, by the way, she did large linoleum prints – of ordinary people: net menders, artichoke pickers, fisherman, things like that. Those [works] become what she is known for.
Rick: But there’s a connection between her art and her politics. For example, her most famous print is a print called ‘Peace is a Human Right’. It came out of the anti-war movement after World War Two. It shows three children sitting around a sunflower. They’re just ordinary kids. But they have a right to peace and to live a life. She brings her politics and beautiful images of life together in that way.
Rick: I met her in the 1960s. I was an art student, and she asked me if I wanted to sit her gallery for her and she taught me how to print artist editions. That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship for me. And later on, she knew I was a filmmaker… I said, “Is Diego Rivera Mexican artist?” And she said, “Well, not quite. He was an American artist too.” And she gave me a wonderful biography of Rivera to read, and that led me down the path of doing a big film on Diego Rivera in the United States. I have very strong connections with her. She’s a significant figure.
Rick: Given the way politics influences art… The 1950s was the age of abstract expressionism. Political art, social art, it was forgotten. It was shoved to the side. So she was pretty much ignored. She died in 1998, and she was known to a small circle, but no one has seen her art in many, many years. So this was an ideal time to bring her back to the public. Especially since of her connection with Rivera. There’s a large Rivera show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and so I thought if there’s any time to do an Emmy Lou Packard show it’d be now. She was a San Francisco artist. She worked with Rivera on his San Francisco mural. So that was the impetus for what I’m doing now, working on this show with Robbin Henderson, my co-curator. To do a retrospective, to connect all the dots; between her personal life, her political life, her connections with Rivera and Frida, and paint a real portrait of this wonderful woman.
Julieta: Her artwork was telling these stories. I know that she was also involved with UC Berkeley. Tell us about some of the movements, touchpoints, and issues that were important to her.
Rick: She had a wide range of issues: she was concerned about history, she was concerned about working people, she was an educator too. She’d been a teacher in San Francisco schools and she’d taught kids to make murals. There’s still one of her murals at a San Francisco public school.* At the bottom it says, “Created by 650 children and Emmy Lou Packard.” So that was her vision of including people. At UC Berkeley she did a very large relief underneath the campus commons dining hall, so she did architectural work. But her real love was prints. You know they’d say, “Why do you do prints? Why not paintings or more murals?” “Well, it’s hard to get murals done and for people to see them. And people need art. So I want to make beautiful pictures that-” (and they can’t afford art? Who can buy a painting if you’re taking care of your kids?) “I want to create beautiful affordable art that they can have in their houses.” Even the implicitly non-political art had a political motive. It furthered what she thought was important. Art is important. And as we know, art is the first thing to go onto the chopping block, art teachers are fired at schools, it’s considered expendable. So she was making the point that art is really important to us; to our culture, to our society.
Julieta: We’re speaking to Rick Tejada-Flores who is part of an important exhibit. So tell us how we can get to know about Emmy Lou Packard and actually see her work. So tell us about this opportunity to actually get to know Emmy Lou Packard’s work.
Rick: Well, as I said, the impetus was this big Rivera show at SFMOMA, which is opening very soon. We’re cross promoting this show and telling people about the Rivera show. And people at MOMA are telling people if you want to know more about Rivera and his work in California then go and see Packard. So this is new to me. I’m a filmmaker, never done an art show, even though I was somewhat of an artist at one point. So I got a very good friend of mine involved; Robbin Henderson, of the Berkeley Art Center. She’s a brilliant curator who sort of guided me through the process. And it’s been a three year path. We started working on this show three years ago: trying to find the art, put it together, the history, the context. So it’s not just her pictures, it’s photographs, it’s statements that Rivera wrote about her. It’s her politics, especially with someone like Emmy Lou Packard you can’t just look at her work. You have to understand the context. Well, you don’t have to, you can enjoy her work. But if you see the context you really get the significance of it.
Rick: So the show is opening in Richmond this week, June 18. And it’ll run June 22 to August 20. But the Richmond Art Center where it’s at is a wonderful institution. Great, great gallery and a wonderful place to put this show on too, because Emmy Lou Packard worked in Richmond. That’s how we hope to get people there, through the Rivera show. But also through talking to you and people who cared about her, and maybe had a print on their wall. Sort of trying to bring her back in that way. And I should also mention when I did the film about Rivera, Emmy Lou Packard was one of my inspirations and naturally she is one of the people interviewed in the film. So we did a little gallery piece too so people can look at her art and then also hear her and see her talking about her art to understand who she is as a person. It’s been a wonderful journey and it’s time for people to see it. And see what they think about it.
Julieta: That’s the voice to Rick Tejada-Flores, he’s been working on this Emmy Lou Packard exhibit. It’s going to be at the Richmond Art Center. And it’s going to be up for a couple of months. We recommend people check it out. Are you doing any opening or closing activities?
Rick: Yes, first of all the opening reception is this Saturday, the 18th, from 2pm to 4pm. There’s going to be a bunch of activities during the length of the exhibition. We have her [printing] press. So we’re going to be doing a demonstration how Emmy Lou Packard made her art. And the end of the show is going to be celebrated with edible art with an appearance and a presentation by the Great Tortilla Conspiracy, who silkscreen tortillas with chocolate. Kids eat them and adults save them as art. So it seems like the perfect way to end her visit to the Bay Area, hearts and minds.
Julieta: Oh, and it’s also a wonderful project by the Yañez father-son duo, where Rio continues that tradition which is such an important one.
Rick: There’s another side that I think should be mentioned, that is very important to the Bay Area. She lived in Mendocino for a very long time and she moved back to the Bay Area in the 1970s. And she was an inspiration and a role model. When people wanted to learn how to make murals they didn’t know how to do it, and she taught them how. She mentored a whole generation of Latina women and people in the Mission, supporting the new emergence of murals and political and social art. So that’s a really important side of her that people don’t really know about. You know if you talk to an artist who lives in the Mission District, they’ll say, “Oh yeah, Emmy Lou Packard.” But that’s an unknown part of her that I think is quite important: the issue of whatever you do passing it on to the next generation. I think that’s a real important thing about who she was and what she cared about.
Rick: So the show is in downtown Richmond. It’s part of the Civic Center complex on Barrett Avenue. The opening reception is this Saturday, June 18, from 2 to 4. The show actually opens the following Wednesday on June 22 and will run until August 20. The galleries are open Wednesday through Saturday each week. Admission is free. There’s information there. You can take a handout and learn more about her. And enjoy her work I hope!
Rick: It’s been a real pleasure talking to you and spreading the message about this important artist.
The Richmond Art Center (RAC) has selected community based art collective Liberación Gráfica as its artists-in-residence this year, with its residency to encompass hands-on community screen printing workshops, a summer youth class and a major fall exhibition. Funding for the artistic endeavor has been provided by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
The art collective—which consists of Richmond artists, teachers and community organizers Eddy Chacon, Lisette Vera, Daniel Cervantes and Francisco Rojas—aims to provide opportunities for personal and community expression via silkscreen printing, said the RAC.
Midway through this month, Liberación Gráfica will bring live screen printing demos to community events throughout Richmond at these locations: The Richmond Juneteenth Festival, Sat., June 18, 12-3 p.m., Nicholls Park, 3230 Macdonald Ave. in Richmond; Low Rider Sundays, Sun., July 31 12-3 p.m., 23rd St. between Grant Ave. and Rheem Ave.; and the Richmond Flea Market, Sun., Aug. 21, 12-3 p.m., 716 W. Gertrude Ave. in Richmond. Additional dates/locations will be announced, per the RAC.
According to the RAC, the prints will raise awareness surrounding Richmond social issues, while also “reflecting the joy and resilience of the community.” The art center added that the project aims to “bring art directly to the people and inspire the community to engage with Richmond and each other through art.”
Another facet of Liberación Gráfica’s residency will be teaching a summer youth class at the RAC centered on screen printing through a social justice lens. During a six-week class, students will become familiarized with basic screen printing materials and techniques “while choosing a theme that is related to community, culture, social justice and/or societal issues,” per the RAC. The class welcomes Richmond youth via referral.
Liberación Gráfica’s residency will hit a crescendo when—this fall from Sept. 13 through Nov. 17—the RAC’s Main Gallery will feature work created by the art collective, as well as Richmond youth and additional community artists.
Want Liberación Gráfica to come to your community event this summer? Contact Roberto Martinez at roberto@richmondartcenter.org. Learn more about the RAC here.
The Richmond Art Center (RAC) will feature Artist of Conscience, an exhibition, from June 22 through Aug. 2, that will explore the life and work of Emmy Lou Packard (1914-1998), an artist not only known for her paintings, prints and murals, but also for her activism, per the center. Robbin Légère Henderson and Rick Tejada-Flores are curating the exhibition.
An Open Reception will be held Sat., June 18, from 2-4 p.m. at the RAC, 2540 Barrett Ave. in Richmond.
According to the RAC, the exhibition will be organized around significant periods of Packard’s life and “will tell the story of this remarkable, though overlooked, artist” via her artwork, photos and ephemera.
Packard had strong local ties. She worked at Kaiser Shipyard’s Fore ‘n’ Aft newspaper in Richmond during WWII, during which time she created images that “urged ending racial segregation and supported voting rights,” said the RAC. She also assisted her mentor, Diego Rivera, on a mural he painted in 1940 on Treasure Island for the Golden Gate International Exposition; the work is currently on display at SFMOMA.
Later, she was a mentor to many Bay Area female Chicana artists, and a few hours north, headed up an effort to keep the Mendocino headlands from development, said the center.
The artist was also a printmaker who created “portraits of workers, explorations of the joys of childhood, the beauty of nature and the importance of history,” per the RAC. A signature image she created—Peace is a Human Right—earned global distribution and featured three children of Asian, black and white ethnicity sitting around a sunflower. “The message is framed in human terms—children are not political; they are just children.”
The Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience exhibition will overlap SFMOMA’s own exhibition—Diego Rivera’s America—which will open July 16 and provide the opportunity to “learn about Packard’s mentor and understand her oeuvre within a broader artistic movement focused on social change and justice,” said the RAC. The center will partner with SFMOMA on a collaborative public program to be announced at a future date.
Funding from California Humanities and The Jay DeFeo Foundation have supported the upcoming exhibition, as have collectors and organizations that have loaned their work, including the Mendocino Art Center and Emmy Lou Packard’s son Donald Cairns and granddaughter Shannon Cairns.
To learn more about events related to the exhibition, click here.
Kids of all ages and their grown-ups are invited to the Richmond Art Center’s Spring free, family event. Celebrate the gifts of spring through art making activities, dancing and music including Bomba music and dance from Quenepas, pive printing by Liberación Gráfica, succulent art planters, photo booth, pottery demonstration and more.
From April 6th to June 4th, the Richmond Art Center is presenting the paintings of popular local artist Dewey Crumpler. The exhibit features an absorbing survey of Crumpler’s “shipping container” work.
More than 120 pieces of his art will be on display, providing an opportunity for viewers “to consider the history, lived legacy and future impact of the global shipping industry”. In this series of works, including new large-scale paintings, Crumpler juxtaposes our dependence on container shipping with the consequences and heritage of cargo ships crossing the oceans over the centuries.
Dewey Crumpler: Crossings asks us to consider the history, lived legacy and future impact of the global shipping industry. Presenting over 120 works, from sketches to large scale paintings, the exhibition represents Crumpler’s twenty-five years of investigation into the beauty and power of ribbed, metal cargo boxes.
In Crumpler’s work shipping containers are dense metaphors; encompassing stories of mass migration, transformation and voyages destined to be repeated. They trace transatlantic trade routes that emerged in the 15th century and are still used today. They also show industry that has irrevocably shaped port cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Richmond. Through connecting historical and contemporary systems, time in Crumpler’s work becomes a loop of rebirth and decline pressed forward through the crossing of water. Crumpler explains, “At the heart of these works is memory.”
For more than 30 years Dewey Crumpler has been a major influence in Bay area artist communities. He has taught at the SF Art Institute since 1989. Recent retrospectives and exhibits include the Hedreen Gallery in Seattle and Frieze 2020, a virtual presentation curated by Zoe Whitley of London’s Chisenhale Gallery.
Crumpler’s work is in the permanent collections of museums in Oakland, Santa Clara and Los Angeles. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and other grants.
JEANNE POWELL is a published poet and essayist. She holds degrees from Wayne State University and the University of San Francisco. Jeanne has taught in the CS, UB and OLLI programs at universities in the City. Her books in print include MY OWN SILENCE and WORD DANCING from Taurean Horn Press.
