In 2013, historian John Corbett collaborated with artist/author Glenn Ligon on a book entitled Sun Ra + Ayé Aton: Space, Interiors, and Exteriors, which featured previously unpublished 1960s and ’70s photographs of Aton’s large-scale murals, as well as stills from Sun Ra’s feature length film, Space is the Place.
Commissioned from the early 1960s through the beginning of the 1970s, the murals were backdrop to house parties, birthdays, heated arguments, fucking, heartache and life.
Corbett wrote that "[Underwood spent] time with a study group made up of older men who played checkers in Washington Park on Chicago’s South Side.
He was an inquisitive young man, asking deep questions about all manners of obscure topics, and several members of the study group told him about their go-to guy for such queries: a fellow they knew as Sunny Ray [sic], who had recently left town but was best equipped to help [Underwood] on his quest for knowledge.
"[3]) During this period Ayé began painting ambitious murals in the homes of Chicago's South Side residents and outdoors in public venues, guided by Ra's suggestions of Egyptian motifs, colorful abstractions, and outer space imagery.
[1] Three of Aton's murals (credited to "aye") were reproduced in Sun Ra's 1972 poetry compilation, Extensions Out: The Immeasurable Equation, Vol.
A posthumous exhibit, Ayé Aton: Sun Ra and Beyond, was presented in Lexington's Living Arts & Science Center's Kincaid Gallery in 2021.