Los Angeles Modern Auctions (LAMA)

Mystic and countercultural figure Marjorie Cameron, who went simply by Cameron, emerged as an avant-garde artist and performer in mid-century Southern California. A transplant from Iowa, she married Jet Propulsion Laboratories co-founder Jack Parsons in 1946. In Cameron, Parsons found the "elemental" woman he had been seeking, and together they were practicants of Thelema, the religion founded by Aleister Crowley. From early on, Cameron's artistic and spiritual pursuits were inextricably entangled, she is especially celebrated for her powerful abilities as a draftsperson and for drawing works that former MoCA Los Angeles director Philippe Vergne described as occupying "the edge of surrealism and psychedelia." Among the artists she collaborated with, and influenced, were Wallace Berman (she graces the cover of the first issue of Berman's journal, Semina) and George Herms, and she appears in films by Curtis Harrington and Kenneth Anger.