Connective Tissue

What gets passed across generations

In this issue:

I did a livestream!
History repeats itself at the car wash
How Faith Ringgold cleared a path
Lately I’m enjoying…

Close-up photo of a drawing in Sarah Atlee’s sketchbook. This drawing includes some chunky abstract flowers rendered using ink, colored pencil, and watercolor. there are many rows of short, repeating marks. The colors include red, yellow, orange, pink, purple, cerulean, and dark blue.

I did a live stream!

For the first time in a hot minute, I did a live stream on Twitch (mainly to test some equipment). In this stream, I’m doodling in my sketchbook, using colored pencils, ink, and watercolor. Adding layers to a drawing is something I can really do for hours. I don’t talk much. Click here to watch the stream for another few days (no Twitch account needed).

Woody Guthrie, half-length portrait, seated, facing front, playing a guitar that has a sticker attached reading: This Machine Kills Fascists

The other day I took my Mom’s car to get detailed.

While I was waiting, a man came up to me and said, “May I ask you a question?” He wanted to know about the bluetooth earbuds I was wearing to listen to a video via my phone, and how he might get a pair of his own. We chatted about bluetooth for a few minutes. Before he left, he said he’d like to offer me a song. He described it this way:

In 1976, Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue played a concert at Hughes Stadium in Ft Collins, Colorado. Dylan and Joan Baez sang a duet of a song called Deportee, originally written by Woody Guthrie after a tragic plane crash in Los Gatos, California. You can read all about the song’s origins here.

The man at the car wash said he told me about this song because it’s happening now. He’s right.

What’s being done to human beings? It’s devastating. And I deeply dislike problems that feel unsolvable. We all hate feeling helpless. In cases like this, I turn to a popular phrase that I most recently heard from social activist Mariame Kaba:

Start where you are. Do what you can. Use what you have.

A portrait photograph of artist Faith Ringgold which appeared along with her 2019 retrospective exhibition in London. Ringgold is an African-American woman, dressed here in a black outfit with large silver jewelry and multicolored hair wraps. She is posed, looking to her right, in front of one of her most famous works, Tar Beach.

Faith Ringgold Cleared a Path

Bisa Butler Remembers Faith Ringgold (1930–2024)

“As fiber artists, we look to Faith Ringgold as our art godmother. I am inspired every day to push the boundaries of my artistic expression because of the legacy she left behind.” - Bisa Butler

Lately I’m Enjoying…

Installation view of Edie Fake’s work titled Affordable Housing for Trans Elders, 2019. This mural features cartoon-like building facades in geometric shapes and bright colors. There is a wide wooden staircase leading off to the right side of the photo.

Looking: at Ecstatic Architecture by Edie Fake (via Wendy MacNaughton)

You can see more work by Edie Fake in this 2024 exhibition titled Persuasions and in this article from art magazine Juxtapoz.

Promotional image for the Hulu show Shogun, 2024, featuring actor Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga. The Japanese man shown here is looking pensively to his lower left, posed against a painterly teal background. He is dressed in traditional samurai costume from the 17th century.

Watching: Shogun on Hulu

Cover for the audiobook edition of The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde. In the upper portion we see a photographic illustration of the author along with brightly colored patterns reminiscent of African wax printed fabrics. Text reads: Penguin Classics Audre Lorde: The Cancer Journals Foreword by Tracy K. Smith.

Reading: Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals (audio edition, narrated by Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins)

Audre Lorde used the English language the way a samurai uses a sword. Elegant, poetic, and if you’re not careful, it’ll cut you in half. I’m pretty new to her work, and I really enjoyed The Cancer Journals for the frank way she discusses her experience with major physical changes. Her account is particularly notable for having been written in the late 1970s, a time when breast cancer wasn’t dinner table conversation (she helped change that). I’m reading more of Lorde’s essays and learning a lot.

Tasting: Talenti mint chocolate chip gelato

A GIF For Those Who Read This Far

Connections are everywhere.

Animated image of moving colored dots connected to one another with straight lines. There are warm colored dots on the left and cool colored dots on the right.

Until next time,

xoxo Sarah

The Fold: Connective Tissue, Part 1