Playground (a.k.a. Merry Go Round; Freedom Now!)

Emmy Lou Packard

Playground is also known as Merry Go Round, Freedom Now, andPeace is Children’s Best Friend. Packard used her imagery as she found it appropriate to support her cause. This image was used for the 1980 Peace and Freedom Party’s poster, which is illustrated on page 12 in the exhibition catalogue Emmy lou Packard 1914-1998. Surrounding her image is letterpress text citing the Peace and Freedom Party’s candidates for President, Vice President, and Senator, along with a listing of what the party was advocating for: jobs, housing, real tax reform, free health care, no nukes, no draft, no war, right for undocumented immigrants, gay rights, child care, and abortion rights. The very rights we are still advocating so many years later.

Emmy Lou Packard, born in 1914 in El Centro, Imperial Valley, California, was one of the most famous American fresco artists and printmaking pioneers of the 20th Century. Packard's visual expression and courageous voice earned her international recognition as an artist and activist for peace.

Marked by an early encounter with Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, her trajectory evolved from assisting Rivera with mural painting, to her own painting and print exhibitions and fresco projects. This revolutionary influence allowed for her vocal and uncompromising disapproval of several issues, including human rights violations, WWII and the American-Soviet "Cold" and Vietnam wars. Before her formal art education, Packard studied under Rivera in Mexico, from 1927-1928. Many of the best known photographs of Frida Kahlo were done by Emmy Lou.

She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley in 1936, and went onto study at the California School of Fine Arts. In 1940 she assisted Rivera in creating the 1,650 square foot fresco at the Golden Gate International Exposition, and returned with him to Mexico City, where she was a guest of Rivera and Frida Khalo.

During WWII she worked for a Richmond, CA., newspaper as a writer and illustrator; during this time she also took on roles in human rights activism, fighting for the rights of women and children, and steadfastly supporting the leadership of Cesar Chavez. Meanwhile, Packard's studies of the Mendocino Headlands in her artwork eventually inspired her to become a key promoter in the establishment of the headlands as a National Park.