Emmy Lou Packard (1914-1998) American, Color Woodcut Print. Signed lower right in pencil. Titled lower left in pencil: "SF Wholesale Produce District." Depicts vendors at a produce stand preparing their wares to sell. 

Overall: 27 3/4 X 21 1/4 in. 

Sight: 19 X 14 1/2 in. 

#2763 . 

Emmy Lou Packard, also known as Betty Lou Packard, was born April 15th, 1914 near El Centro, California. Her father, Walter Packard, founded an agricultural cooperative community in the Imperial Valley and was an internationally known agronomist. In 1927 the Packard family traveled to Mexico for Walter’s consulting job with the Mexican government working on agrarian and land settlement reform issues. Emmy was already painting and drawing by this point, and her mother introduced her to artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, marking the beginning of a long friendship and mentorship under both. In 1934 she eloped to Nevada with the architect Burton Cairns, and had one child named Donald. In 1936 she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and went on to study sculpture, mural, and fresco painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. She became known early on for incorporating political themes and images into her work. In 1939 Burton died in a car accident, and she traveled to Mexico to live with Rivera and Kahlo for support in her grief, working as their studio assistant. She became interested in photography, and took many photographs of the couple, a first-hand witness to their turbulent relationship. When Diego Rivera came to San Francisco in 1940 for the Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE), he asked Emmy to be the chief assistant for painting the Pan American Unity mural. Her image is a prominent part of it. Between 1944 and 1945 she briefly worked as an illustrator of a labor newspaper for the San Francisco Bay Area shipyards. On May 29th, 1959, she married artist Byron T. Randall, but they divorced in 1972. Throughout the 1960s and 70s she designed and executed many murals, as well as becoming interested in printmaking and assisting in restoring historic frescoes that had weathered away in the rough climate of the American Southwest. Much of her later life was spent in activism, encouraging racial and gender equality and spearheading the movement to preserve the Mendocino headlands. Emmy produced nearly 300 oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings, and today her work can be found in the collections of the British Museum, the Oakland Museum of California, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. She died on February 22nd, 1998 in San Francisco of diabetes-related illnesses.