In the first-ever biography written about her, Wormwood Star traces the extraordinary life of the enigmatic artist Marjorie Cameron, one of the most fascinating figures to emerge from the American Underground art world and film scene.
Born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, in 1922, Cameron's uniqueness and talent as a natural-born artist were evident to those around her early on. During World War 2, she served in the Women's Navy and worked in Washington as an aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After the War, her life took off when she met her husband, Jack Parsons. By day, Parsons was a brilliant rocket scientist; by night, he was Master of the Agape Lodge, a fraternal magickal order whose head was the most famous magus of the 20th century: Aleister Crowley.
Gradually, through the course of their marriage, Parsons initiated Cameron into the occult sciences, and the biography offers a fresh perspective on her role in the infamous Babalon Working magick rituals Parsons conducted with the future founder of Scientology, L Ron Hubbard. Following Parsons' death in 1952 from a chemical explosion, Cameron inherited her husband's magickal mantle and embarked on a lifelong spiritual quest, a journey reflected in the otherworldly images she depicted, many drawn from the Elemental Kingdom and astral plane.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Cameron became a celebrated personality in California's underground art world and film scene. In 1954 she starred in Kenneth Anger's visual masterwork, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, stealing the show from her co-star Anais Nin. The filmmaker, Curtis Harrington, was so taken with Cameron he made a film study dedicated to her artwork, The Wormwood Star. He then brought Cameron's powerful and mysterious presence to bear on his evocative noir thriller, Night Tide, casting her alongside a young Dennis Hopper.
Cameron was an inspirational figure to the many artists and poets who congregated around Wallace Berman's Semina scene, and in 1957 Berman's show at the Ferus Gallery was shut down by LA's vice squad due to the sexually charged nature of one of her drawings. Undaunted, she continued to carve a unique and brilliant path as an artist.
A retrospective of Cameron's work, entitled The Pearl of Reprisal, was held at LA's Barnsdall Art Park in 1989 and following her death, some of her most admired pieces were included in the Reflections of a New Aeon Exhibition at the Eleven Seven Gallery in Long Beach, California. Cameron's famous Peyote Vision drawing made its way into the Beat Culture and the New America retrospective held at the Whitney Museum in 1995. And in 2006, a survey of her work was featured in the critically lauded Semina Culture Exhibition. The following year an exhibition of her sketches and drawings was held at the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York.
With so much of her life and work shrouded in mystery, Wormwood Star sheds new light on this most remarkable artist and elusive occult icon.
