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 CAM CUNNINGHAM—BIOGRAPHY
Born in Detroit 1939 and raised up in Lubbock, Texas, I played football, no painting or poetry and drove my ’50 Ford with ’53 Mercury engine, lowered with glass packs. Saved by rhythm and blues, Big Joe Turner, the Crows, Chuck, Little Richard, Fats and Bo…Buddy Holly was a year ahead in high school. Danced to the Crickets at the roller rink. Drummer, Jerry I. Allison’s girlfriend, Peggy Sue, was a year behind me. Eagle Scout, Outstanding Young Citizen (OYC) in ’55, frequenter of local bootleggers.
Texas Tech, economics major and radicalized in the U.S. Army by C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, Mao Zedong, Ta, Ta, Tan, Tan (run, run, fight, fight).
After law school, LSD, mushrooms and mescalito, I left the OYC plaque in a tree at the West Texas Freak Festival in Austin and began my Spiritual Grapes of Wrath, through meditation, Tarot, breathwork, Enneagram, vision fasts and Huichol Shamanism.
A People’s lawyer for 40 years—first on a Navajo Reservation then in an Austin law commune defending CO’s, dopers, draft dodgers and political activists before making the Texas-California trek to teach at New College of California Law School in San Francisco from a Marxist perspective (Karl and Groucho).
The Artist’s Way, opened the door for me 12 years ago. I plunged into poetry and painting—birds, whimsy, shamanism. Often I paint outside on a hilltop near Sebastopol, California, using images from meditation, intuition, journeys and nature. Scarlet, cobalt, ochre, and orange images of the profane and sacred twirl together in humor and play.
Like poets Mary Oliver, Gary Snyder, Bob Dylan, Seamus Heaney, Billy Collins, I have published some.
Sylvia Marie is my partner of twenty years. She’s gifted—a healer and therapist. Together we feed seven cats, tend a large organic garden, feed our souls in nature and cycle the world on our bikes. I paint, write poetry, pursue workers rights, and take great pleasure in being the chef for Sylvia Marie’s workshops.
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