Cameron
"Pluto Transiting the Twelfth House",  1978-1986
Ink on paper
Unframed: 12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 22.9 cm)
Framed: 15 x 12 inches (38.1 x 30.5 cm)
Courtesy of Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery and The Cameron Parsons Foundation

Selected by Laura Hoptman

An enigmatic figure in the early days of the California art scene, Cameron (1922-1995) was a visionary painter, draftsman, actress and poet who bridged the spiritual and artistic counter cultures flourishing in Los Angeles and Hollywood.  After a stint in the navy as a cartographer, she returned to California and became the wife and spiritual avatar of Jack Parsons, a founder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and an influential leader of the philosophical group Ordo Temple Orientis.  Cameron’s art and lifestyle were influenced by her relationship to Parsons who died six years after their 1946 marriage.   Parson’s death had a profound effect on Cameron, and in the late 1950’s, she destroyed much of her work.

With a brief sojourn in Santa Fe in the late 1960s, Cameron spent her last decades in a small house in West Hollywood. In 1989 Cameron co-edited with O.T.O. leader Hymenaeus Beta an edition of the occult writings of Parsons. Also that year, Cameron’s artworks were surveyed in an exhibition at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery curated by Edward Leffingwell. Titled The Pearl of Reprisal, that exhibition included water-color, ink, and casein drawings from the series Anatomy of Madness(1956) and Pluto Transiting the Twelfth House (1978-1986). Cameron died of cancer at the Veterans Hospital in Los Angeles in 1995. A selection of her work was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art exhibition, Beat Culture and the New America 1950-1965 and in the 2005-2007 traveling exhibition Semtnd Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle, organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Cameron’s work is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art.