Masonic Temple, Mendocino

Emmy Lou Packard

The historic Masonic Hall in Mendocino, also known as the Masonic Hall and the Menodcino Lodge No. 179, California, features a hand-carved sculpture older than the building itself titled "Time and the Maiden" atop its cupola, created from the trunk of a single redwood tree by the temple's eventual architect, Erik Albertson. Intended simply as an object of personal craftsmanship, Albertson carved it at the mouth of nearby Big River - likely where the trunk drifted after coming loose from a raft of logs on their way to being processed for lumber. Within the shelter of a makeshift lean-to, and using only lamplight to work by, Albertson used hand chisels to complete the 10' sculpture. It was later used as a backdrop in the television shows "Murder, She Wrote" and "The Fugitive".

Emmy lou Packard pays tribute to the noted landmark in this two-color woodcut, the building gleaming white against black, and a moody sky, which incorporates the second color - deep navy blue - to achieve a foggy coastal drama. Packard had already established herself as a muralist, printmaker, painter, and labor activist in San Francisco when she moved to Mendocino in 1959. She remained there for fourteen years, during which time her love of the town and its stunning coastal environs became the driving force behind her organizing to save the famous headland bluffs, now a part of the Mendocino Headlands State Park.

Emmy Lou Packard was born on 4 April 1914 in El Centro, in the Imperial Valley of California. Her father was an internationally known agronomist and her parents helped to establish the agricultural cooperative community in which they lived. Her great-grandmother fought to obtain due process of law for woman. Emmy Lou’s courageous voice earned her international recognition as an artist and activist for peace.

Packard studied with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico from 1927-1928. From 1932 to 1936, she studied at the University of California Berkeley, earning her B.A. While a student a Berkeley she was art editor of the Daily Californian, the student newspaper, and of the Occident, the campus literary magazine. She continued her studies at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, where she completed courses in fresco and sculpture. In 1940 she assisted Rivera with the 1,650 square foot fresco at the Golden Gate International Exposition at Treasure Island in San Francisco, and returned with him to Mexico City, where she was a guest of he and Frida Kahlo.

During World War II, Packard worked as an engineering drafter in defense industries, most notably in the Kaiser shipyards. During the late 1940s, she experimented with plastics in light sculptures, illustrated third-grade textbooks for the San Francisco public schools, organized the San Francisco Arts Festival, and was a co-founder of Artists Equity. In 1959, she created an eighty-five-foot-long bas-relief mural in cast concrete for the University of California Berkeley and it still hangs on the Cesar Chavez Student Center at Lower Sproul Plaza. In both her art and writing, Packard championed the rights of women and children, and steadfastly supported the leadership of Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers.

Emmy Lou Packard died on 22 February 1998 in San Francisco, California.