User:Horse DeWormer/Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy

Laini (Sylvia) Abernathy
As a member of the Black Arts Movement in Chicago in the late 1960s, Abernathy was a major fixture of the emerging wave of graphic design, specializing in jazz album covers 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.

Career

Sylvia Abernathy was attending the Illinois Institute of Technology when she, along with her photographer husband Billy Abernathy, began working with the Black Arts Movement in 1967. This organization was founded to continue the legacy of Malcolm X after his assassination, promoting art, literature and music with a message of Black liberation and pride. In the tradition of many of their contemporaries, such as the poet Amiri Baraka, the Abernathys changed their names to the African Laini and Fundi to emphasize this connection to their heritage. Laini, as one of the only female graphic designers in the music industry at the time, created album covers for 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 later worked with Baraka, designing book covers in her signature style. Though Abernathy died in 2010 with little mainstream recognition, her work helped to pioneer the avant-garde visual aesthetic now inseparably linked with 1960s experimental jazz music.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/cooper-hewitt-smithsonian-design-museum/2021/02/22/laini-abernathy-black-graphic-designer/
https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2021/02/10/laini-abernathy/

https://letterformarchive.org/news/view/laini-sylvia-abernathy

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/race-and-design-american-life/kingdom-commerce/laini-and-fundi/