Una Tarde con The Great Tortilla Conspiracy at SFMOMA
Special Event to Celebrate Two Exhibitions: Diego Rivera’s America at SFMOMA and Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience at Richmond Art Center
Thursday, August 4, 3:30pm-7:30pm
SFMOMA, Howard Street Entrance
Join Bay Area political performance collective The Great Tortilla Conspiracy for an irreverent night of screen-printed quesadillas, communal snacking, and graphics inspired by Diego Rivera’s America!
To complement both Diego Rivera’s America at SFMOMA and Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience at Richmond Art Center, this four-hour event brings the unorthodox materials and mischievous humor of The Great Tortilla Conspiracy (GTC) to the museum. In an interactive performance reminiscent of Diego Rivera’s own demonstration at the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition, GTC artists Jos Sances, Art Hazelwood, and Río Yañez will screen print graphics inspired by Rivera and Packard (Rivera’s principal assistant on Pan American Unity) onto tortillas with edible ink. After cooking them on a traditional comal, the collective will serve them up—with a side of playful conversation—to museum visitors.
Women Weaving Stories: Collaborative Learning Circle
A Workshop by Mujeres Unidas y Activas
Saturday, July 30, 1:30pm-3:30pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA
Members of Mujeres Unidas y Activas will facilitate a hands-on creation workshop using various materials such as fabric and thread, paper and markers to reflect and question on the concepts of heart, community and borders in a friendly and creative environment. The workshop will be given in Spanish and Mam.
Español
Mujeres Tejiendo Historias: Círculo de Aprendizaje
Un taller de Mujeres Unidas y Activas
Sábado 30 de julio, 1:30-3:30pm
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA
GRATIS
Miembras de Mujeres Unidas y Activas impartirán un taller de creación manual usando diversos materiales como telas, hilos, papel y plumones, para reflexionar nos y cuestionar los conceptos de corazon, comunidad y fronteras en un entorno amable y creativo. El taller se impartirá en español y Mam.
Mam
Xuj nchechmon qe o’-che’x tuj: Círculo te tuntb’ant qu’n
Jun yek’b’il chu’n Mujeres Unidas y Activas
Sabado 30 de julio
1:30-3:30
Txjalil Mujeres Unidas y Activas k-elix chq’on jun yek’bil, tij alkyechaq jaka b’ant tun q-q’ab’, ch-a’jb’lal naksis eyb’aj tisin: mant, k’lab, txaq u’j, ex qe tze te q’ol tk’a (plumones), tun qximin ti’j ex tun qyolin ti’j jun qximb’itz tu’j qanmi, qtanmi ex qmonjon tuk’il jul tnam at qtxlaj ex naksin tu’n. A jun xnaq’tzb’il kxel q’on tun tyol a’m ex tuj qyol (Mam).
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA
FREE
Art historian, curator and writer Terezita Romo will facilitate an artist panel discussion that explores Emmy Lou Packard’s artistic and social legacy in the Bay Area. Artist panelists are Miranda Bergman, Elaine Chu, and Lucía González Ippolito.
BIOS
Terezita “Tere” Romo is an art historian, curator and writer with a long career as an arts administrator and foundation officer. Most recently, she served as the Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the San Francisco Foundation. Previously, she was the Arts Project Coordinator at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC). Romo also served as the Arts Director at the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago and Resident Curator at The Mexican Museum in San Francisco. An art historian, Romo has published essays on Chicana/o art in journals, anthologies and exhibition catalogues and is the author of Malaquias Montoya (2011). She is currently an independent curator as well as Associate Faculty and Lecturer within the UC, Davis Chicana/o Studies Department.
Miranda Bergman is a veteran of the community mural movement, transforming urban space by painting in the streets for over 40 years. Her murals stretch from various sites in the United States, to Mexico, Central America, and Palestine. Bergman grew up in the San Francisco Mission District and currently lives in Oakland. In the 1970s, she joined other artists in the Haight-Ashbury Muralists. From 1972 to 1976 Bergman created labor-themed posters with Jane Norling for the Working Peoples’ Artists collective. In 1986, Bergman worked with Juana Alicia, Hector Noel Méndez, Ariella Seidenberg, and Arch Williams to create the mural El Amancer (The Dawn) in a park in Managua, Nicaragua. In 1994 she was one of the seven women artists who in 1994 created the MaestraPeace mural, the largest mural in San Francisco, which covers The Women’s Building. She teaches visual arts and muralism to many constituencies. Her artwork and essays have been published in over 30 books, and appear in several films.
Elaine Chu was born and raised in San Francisco. She graduated from the School of the Arts High school and continued to study drawing, painting and art history at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. In 2005 Chu joined the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program while living in Philadelphia and worked as a mural artist and teaching artist. When she returned home to San Francisco in 2011 she began working for Precita Eyes Mural Arts Association, training and inspiring her development as an artist under the guidance and mentorship of its founder, master muralist Susan Cervantes. For over a decade she has worked at Precita as the Director’s assistant, a teaching artist and as a muralist. Chu is also the co-founder of the mural collaborative Twin Walls Mural Company alongside her best friend Marina Perez-Wong. Since 2013 they have painted over 30 murals together.
Lucía González Ippolito is a Mexican-American artist, teacher and activist born and raised in the San Francisco Mission District, a neighborhood vastly impacted by gentrification, one of the many themes of focus in her social/political artwork. She directed and designed the Mission Makeover mural, a 25-foot mural addressing issues of wealth inequality and displacement in the Mission neighborhood, as well as the Women of the Resistance mural, depicting 38 women activists in San Francisco’s Balmy Alley. She was a lead collaborator on the most recent and largest mural of the Latinx Cultural District, “Alto al Fuego en la Mision,” honoring the life of Amilcar Perez Lopez. Ippolito is also a screen printer and co-founder of the San Francisco Poster Syndicate, a collective of students and artists who live-print free political posters at protests and community events. Their posters are in the collection of the Library of Congress. She studied at the Chicago Art Institute, and graduated from City College of San Francisco and San Francisco Art Institute.
Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience was made possible with support from The Jay DeFeo Foundation. Vital support was also provided by California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA
FREE
Create art for environmental justice in Richmond!
Join the Fencelines team for ahands-on art workshop that will provide space to reflect on local conditions of environmental injustice in Richmond. Participants will paint on recycled wooden fence slats with images, messages and stories that respond to the following prompts:“What message do you have for the polluting industry here in Richmond?” and “What vision do you have for your community in the future?”
The slats created in is workshop will be used to form a temporary public art installation along a city-owned fence bordering the Chevron refinery and North Richmond neighborhoods in fall 2022. Additionally, this installation will be shown in an exhibition at Richmond Art Center in spring 2023.
This workshop is part of a series of workshops that will be presented at Richmond Art Center every third Saturday this summer. Additional workshops will be presented out in Richmond at local community events. All workshops are free to attend.
Fencelines Art Workshops at Richmond Art Center
Saturday, June 18, 2pm-4pm
Saturday, July 16, 12pm-2pm
Saturday, August 20, 12pm-2pm
Saturday, September 17, 12pm-2pm
Fencelines Workshops in the Community
Saturday, June 18, 10am-12pm: Urban Tilth Volunteer Day at Unity Park
Saturday, July 9: Richmond LAND: Love Your Block Event in North Richmond
Saturday, August 6: APEN Refinery Explosion 10 Year Memorial Event; Hood Day in North Richmond at Shields-Reid Park
… and other summer 2022 events with Richmond Our Power Coalition TBD!
Fencelinesaspires to create a unique, celebratory monument with the community in Richmond by: facilitating the creation of artwork by the community itself, promoting conversation and connection between Richmond community members, bringing awareness to issues of environmental injustice, and beautifying and activating an otherwise underutilized space. The project design and participatory format is explicitly designed to center and amplify the voices of the community.
The Fencelines team is made up of local artists, organizers, and community members, Princess Robinson, Graham L.P., Dulce Galicia and Gita Khandagle. This project is presented as a partnership between Richmond Our Power Coalition, Richmond Art Center, and Fencelines.
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.
Richmond Art Center 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA 94804 Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 10am-4pm
Richmond, CA: Richmond Art Center announces Artist of Conscience, an exhibition exploring the life and work of Emmy Lou Packard (1914-1998), a remarkable artist known for her paintings, prints and murals, as well as her activism.
Presenting artwork, photos and ephemera, and organized around key periods of Packard’s life, Artist of Conscience will tell the story of this remarkable, though over-looked, artist.
Packard was mentored by Diego Rivera and became his principal assistant on the mural he painted on Treasure Island for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1940 (currently on view at SFMOMA). During WWII Packard worked at Kaiser shipyard’s newspaper in Richmond, Fore ‘n’ Aft, creating images that urged ending racial segregation and supported voting rights. After that, she turned to printmaking, creating portraits of workers, explorations of the joys of childhood, the beauty of nature and the importance of history. One of her signature images distributed around the world, Peace is a Human Right, shows three children, Asian, Black and White, seated around a sunflower. The message is framed in human terms — children are not political; they are just children. Later in life, Packard inspired and mentored a generation of mostly female and Chicana artists in the Bay Area. She also led the movement to save the Mendocino headlands from development.
This exhibition is curated by Robbin Légère Henderson and Rick Tejada-Flores.
Emmy Lou Packard: Artist of Conscience will be presented at the same time as SFMOMA’s exhibition Diego Rivera’s America (opening July 16, 2022), offering audiences the opportunity to learn about Packard’s mentor and understand her oeuvre within a broader artistic movement focused on social change and justice. Richmond Art Center is working in partnership with SFMOMA on a collaborative public program (to be announced).
The exhibition at Richmond Art Center is supported by funding from California Humanities and The Jay DeFeo Foundation. Collectors and organizations generously loaning work include Mendocino Art Center, and Emmy Lou Packard’s son Donald Cairns and granddaughter Shannon Cairns.
Exhibition 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
Open Reception Event Date: Saturday, June 18, 2pm-4pm
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
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
Images: (top) Emmy Lou Packard, Artichoke Picker, circa 1955; (above left) Emmy Lou Packard, Peace is a Human Right, 1949; (above right) Diego River, Detail of Emmy Lou Packard in the Panamerican Unity mural, 1941
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.
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA
FREE
Join us for an artist talk with J.B. Broussard in conversation with artist Raymond Holbert. This talk is presented in conjunction with Broussard’s solo exhibition The Eastern Shore.
Top Image: J.B. Broussard, The General, 2021. Courtesy of the Artist
NAKA Dance Theater and Mujeres Unidas y Activas will be presenting a short excerpt of their collaborative performance work, Y Basta Ya! (Enough!) (Tu’mixtzin ja’la!) where the bodies and the words of Latinx and Indigenous women are featured centerstage. In the face of so much systemic injustice, they speak and dance their stories out loud.
Mujeres Tejiendo Historias: Recepción de apertura
Sábado, 25 de junio, 14:00-16:00
Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Avenue, Richmond, CA
NAKA Dance Theatre y Mujeres Unidas y Activas presentarán una fragmento de su trabajo colaborativo Y Basta Ya! (Tu’mixtzin ja’la!), un proyecto de danza, teatro y música donde el cuerpo y la palabra de la mujer se visibilizan ante tanta injusticia sistemática, contando y bailando sus historias.
Eje xuj nchachmon qa o che ex tuj
Sábado, 25 de junio, 14:00-16:00
NAKA Dance Theatre y Mujeres Unidas y Activas k-elix chyek’i’n jun piẍ aq’untl ob’aj kyb’inchan Y Basta Ya (Tu’mix tzin ja’la) jun aq’untl te b’ixb’il, yek’b’il ex b’ib’itz jatum nchaj etz q’incha’lin txumlal ex tyol xuj tun tni nti no’k chq’on chipin xuj (injusticia), ntzaj chq’aman ex nchab’ixin jun che o ch-ex tu’j.
