Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy

Last updated
Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy
Born
Sylvia
Died2010 (2011)
NationalityAmerican
Other namesLaini Abernathy
Education Illinois Institute of Technology
Occupation(s)artist and activist
Known forChicago's Black arts movement
Notable workjazz record covers,
Wall of Respect
Spouse Fundi (Billy) Abernathy

Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy (died 2010) was an American artist and activist. [1] [2] She was an important figure in Chicago's Black arts movement, often working in collaboration with her husband, photographer Fundi (Billy) Abernathy. [3] [4]

Career

Abernathy studied at the Illinois Institute of Technology, located on the South Side of Chicago. [5] As a young artist, Abernathy was commissioned by Delmark Records to design album covers for jazz records, including such iconic releases as Sound (1966) by Roscoe Mitchell of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra's Sun Song (1966), and Leon Sash's I Remember Newport (1967), some of which featured Fundi's photographs. Abernathy's designs typically worked with Art Deco-inspired typefaces and vibrant color block patterns mirroring the deconstructive, forward-thinking nature of the music. She was working during a time when few African-Americans held positions of creative authority on the visual side of the predominantly Black jazz movement -- jazz album design, popularized by designers such as Paul Bacon and Reid Miles, made use of bold abstract forms and negative space to subvert the racist stereotypes associated with black music in previous decades. This art scene, however, was largely male-dominated and white, despite the progressive cultural integration it advocated.

In 1967, she joined the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), an organization founded to continue the legacy of Malcolm X after his assassination, promoting art, literature and music with a message of Black liberation and pride. Abernathy designed the layout of the Wall of Respect , a street mural that featured African American leaders. [6] Her design featured sections that were each designed to be filled by an artist or group of artists. [7] After changing her name to the Africanized Laini, she designed the 1970 experimental photo book “In Our Terribleness (Some Elements and Meaning in Black Style)” featuring poetry by Amiri Baraka and images by her husband, Fundi. [8]

Abernathy died in 2010. She received little mainstream recognition, although her work helped to pioneer the avant-garde visual aesthetic now inseparably linked with 1960s experimental jazz music.

Related Research Articles

Free jazz or Free Form in the early- to mid-1970s is a style of avant-garde jazz or an experimental approach to jazz improvisation that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s when musicians attempted to change or break down jazz conventions, such as regular tempos, tones, and chord changes. Musicians during this period believed that the bebop and modal jazz that had been played before them was too limiting, and became preoccupied with creating something new. The term "free jazz" was drawn from the 1960 Ornette Coleman recording Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation. Europeans tend to favor the term "free improvisation". Others have used "modern jazz", "creative music", and "art music".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aestheticism</span> Art movement emphasizing aesthetic considerations and fonts over social values

Aestheticism was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art and fonts should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment best illustrated by the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.

Avant-garde jazz is a style of music and improvisation that combines avant-garde art music and composition with jazz. It originated in the early 1950s and developed through to the late 1960s. Originally synonymous with free jazz, much avant-garde jazz was distinct from that style.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Arts Movement</span> 1960s–1970s art movement

The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faith Ringgold</span> American artist (born 1930)

Faith Ringgold is an American painter, painting on different materials including fabric, a published author, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, and intersectional activist, perhaps best known for her narrative quilts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ntozake Shange</span> American playwright and poet (1948–2018)

Ntozake Shange was an American playwright and poet. As a Black feminist, she addressed issues relating to race and Black power in much of her work. She is best known for her Obie Award-winning play, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1975). She also penned novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Liliane (1994), and Betsey Brown (1985), about an African-American girl run away from home.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sonia Sanchez</span> American poet, playwright and activist (born 1934)

Sonia Sanchez is an American poet, writer, and professor. She was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement and has written over a dozen books of poetry, as well as short stories, critical essays, plays, and children's books. In the 1960s, Sanchez released poems in periodicals targeted towards African-American audiences, and published her debut collection, Homecoming, in 1969. In 1993, she received Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and in 2001 was awarded the Robert Frost Medal for her contributions to the canon of American poetry. She has been influential to other African-American poets, including Krista Franklin.

American modernism, much like the modernism movement in general, is a trend of philosophical thought arising from the widespread changes in culture and society in the age of modernity. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States beginning at the turn of the 20th century, with a core period between World War I and World War II. Like its European counterpart, American modernism stemmed from a rejection of Enlightenment thinking, seeking to better represent reality in a new, more industrialized world.

Jeff Donaldson was a visual artist whose work helped define the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Donaldson, co-founder of AfriCOBRA and contributor to the momentous Wall of Respect, was a pioneer in African-American personal and academic achievement. His art work is known for creating alternative black iconography connected to Africa and rooted in struggle, in order to replace the history of demeaning stereotypes found in mainstream white culture.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cauleen Smith</span> American film director

Cauleen Smith is an American born filmmaker and multimedia artist. She is best known for her feature film Drylongso and her experimental works that address the African-American identity, specifically the issues facing black women today. Smith is currently a professor in the Department of Art at the University of California - Los Angeles.

Wadsworth Aikens Jarrell is an American painter, sculptor and printmaker. He was born in Albany, Georgia, and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he attended the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduation, he became heavily involved in the local art scene and through his early work he explored the working life of African-Americans in Chicago and found influence in the sights and sounds of jazz music. In the late 1960s he opened WJ Studio and Gallery, where he, along with his wife, Jae, hosted regional artists and musicians.

AfriCOBRA is an African-American artists' collective formed in Chicago in 1968. The group was founded by Jeff Donaldson, Wadsworth Jarrell, Jae Jarrell, Barbara Jones-Hogu, Nelson Stevens, and Gerald Williams.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margaret Danner</span> American poet

Margaret Danner (1915–1984) was an American poet, editor and cultural activist known for her poetic imagery and her celebration of African heritage and cultural forms.

Xenobia Bailey is an American fine artist, designer, Supernaturalist, cultural activist and fiber artist best known for her eclectic crochet African-inspired hats and her large scale crochet pieces and mandalas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jae Jarrell</span> American artist (born 1935)

Elaine "Jae" Jarrell is an American artist best known for her fashion designs and her involvement with the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s.

<i>Wall of Respect</i> 1967 mural in Chicago, IL

The Wall of Respect was an outdoor mural first painted in 1967 by the Visual Arts Workshop of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC). It is considered the first large-scale, outdoor community mural, which spawned a movement across the U.S. and internationally. The mural represented the contributions of fourteen designers, photographers, painters, and others, notably Chicago muralist William Walker, in a design layout proposed by Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy. Some of the artists would go on to found the influential AfriCOBRA artists collective. The work comprised a montage of portraits of heroes and heroines of African American history painted on the sides of two story, closed tavern building at the corner of Chicago's East 43rd Street and South Langley Avenue, in Bronzeville, Chicago, sometimes called the Black Belt. Images included Nat Turner, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Gwendolyn Brooks, W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Aretha Franklin, and Harriet Tubman, among others. While it only lasted a few years, until the building was torn down in 1972, it inspired community mural projects across the United States and internationally.

Amina Baraka is an American poet, actress, author, community organizer, singer, dancer, and activist. Her poetic themes are about social justice, family, and women. Her poetry has been featured in anthologies including Unsettling America (1994). She was active in the 1960s Black Arts Movement, as an artist.

Bisa Butler is an American fiber artist who has created a new genre of quilting that has transformed the medium. Although quilting has long been considered a craft, her interdisciplinary methods—which create quilts that look like paintings—have catapulted quilting into the field of fine art. She is known for her vibrant, quilted portraits celebrating Black life, portraying both everyday people and notable historical figures. Her works now count among the permanent collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Art Institute of Chicago, Pérez Art Museum Miami and about a dozen other art museums nationwide. She has also exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Epcot Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and many other venues. In 2020, she was commissioned to quilt cover images for Time magazine, including the "Person of the Year" issue and its "100 Women of the Year" issue. With a multi-year wait list for private commissions, one of Butler's quilts sold at auction in 2021 for $75,000 USD.

Billy Abernathy (1939–2016) was an American photographer. He was married to Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy, an artist and activist.

Robert Paige is a multi-disciplinary artist and arts educator working across textile design, painting, collage, and sculpture based in Woodlawn, Chicago. As an artist and textile designer allied with the Black Arts Movement, Robert E. Paige trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and worked at the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Sears Roebuck & Company and Fiorio Milano design house in Italy. Paige was raised in Chicago's South Side where he continues to live and work, further developing his longstanding career in the decorative arts. His work visually and conceptually interrogates political and cultural themes that reflect both historical and contemporary African American art references, as well as traditional textile practices of West Africa.

References

  1. "From the Collection: Laini (Sylvia Abernathy)". letterformarchive.org. Retrieved 2020-11-24.
  2. "Laini (Sylvia Abernathy) at Fonts in Use". Fonts in Use. Retrieved 2020-12-27.
  3. "Confrontation in Chicago". Negro Digest: 74–78. July 1968 via Google Books.
  4. "Laini and Fundi (Sylvia and Billy) Abernathy - Race and the Design of American Life - The University of Chicago Library". www.lib.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-27.
  5. Nishikawa, Kinohi (June 2019). "Reframing Blackness: The Installation Aesthetic of In Our Terribleness". Chicago Review. University of Chicago. 62 (4).
  6. Crawford, Margo Nathalie (2006). "Black Light on the Wall of Respect: The Chicago Black Arts Movement". New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. p. 24.
  7. Zorach, Rebecca (2019). "Claiming Space, Being Public". Art for People's Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965–1975. Durham and London: Duke University Press. p. 59.
  8. "Books Received". Black World Digest. 21 (3): 97. January 1972 via Google Books.