Cameron: Songs for the Witch Woman

A key underground figure of Los Angeles' midcentury counterculture, Cameron (1922–95) created a body of visionary painting and drawing that won her equal esteem among the Californian assemblage artists and the occult world of that time. Her powerful personality led to a number of roles in key underground movies such as Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, and her features adorn the cover of the first issue of Wallace Berman's Semina. Today, her delicate melding of Surrealism and mysticism has been rediscovered by a younger generation of artists. This volume, published for an exhibition at MOCA LA, includes pieces formerly thought lost, ranging from early paintings to drawings, sketchbooks and poetry, as well as ephemera, collaborations and correspondence with individuals such as her husband, Jack Parsons (the rocket pioneer, cofounder of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and acolyte of Aleister Crowley), and mythologist Joseph Campbell.