More Than a Headline: A Closer Look at the Art and Life of Camilla Hall 

About

Camilla Hall’s name is most infamously associated with the Symbionese Liberation Army, a militant revolutionary group that she joined in California’s Bay Area in 1974. The SLA attracted national attention when it kidnapped Patricia Hearst, an heir to the Hearst media empire. Camilla and five other SLA members died in a shoot-out with Los Angeles police on May 17, 1974.

But the St. Peter native was much more than a revolutionary. She was a daughter, a friend, a sister, and an artist. Both of Camilla’s parents, the Rev. George and Lorena Hall, displayed visual creative tendencies. George Hall, who came to St. Peter in 1938 with Lorena to teach at Gustavus, carved wood and sketched. Lorena, who founded the Gustavus art department, was a talented landscape painter who had studied under Birger Sandzen at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas.

Camilla developed a talent for whimsical line drawings. In 1970, she moved to Los Angeles, following a couple of former co-workers, and devoted herself to art full-time. There, she sold her art at the many street fairs of the time. In early 1971, she moved to the Bay Area because she had heard the market there was better for art. But after a short time, she abandoned her enterprise and took a series of odd jobs, mostly landscaping and in parks.

This exhibit showcases several of Camilla’s prints and provides an overview of her life—from her girlhood in St. Peter to her move to Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and ultimately Berkeley, where her fate was sealed.