Female trailblazers, ancient Mesopotamian listicles, and Tom Hanks | Creativity News 11/28/22

Monday Motion: Art on the outskirts, the evolution of encoding information, and Tom Hanks at his best

Nov 28, 2022

First things first. Laterally is changing.

We’re going to be transferring our platforms.

We’ll have more information down the road, but essentially, we’re making a change to help equip Laterally to continue to grow and develop.

In the process, share this and bring more people on board as we drive this publication forward!

Thank you for reading Laterally. This post is public so feel free to share it.

Thanks for being a part of the Laterally family.

And thank you for reading.

Unsung art trailblazers

Not familiar with many female expressionist painters?

I think you would be forgiven for that.

Allow me to introduce you to the story of three women in the Texas Panhandle who made this artistic style their own.

As the article begins:

New York City may be the home of American Abstract Expressionism, but for some of the movement’s most notable women artists, Amarillo, Texas was also an important hub. A recent book, Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West (Texas A&M University Press, 2022) by Amy Von Lintel and Bonnie Roos, uncovers the little-known stories of Elaine de Kooning, Jeanne Reynal, and Louise Nevelson’s professional and creative gains in the region, and especially in the Texas Panhandle. Von Lintel and Roos offer a thoroughly researched, engaging, and alternative view of the often male-centered, East Coast-based history of Abstract Expressionism in the United States. Their account of Amarillo’s avid appreciation for avant-garde art from the 1950s to 1980s disputes the claim that innovative art can’t reach peripheral places.

Innovative art in peripheral places.

Not only is this the story of female empowerment, it is the story of geographic empowerment.

Industries and movements may have their centers of gravity.

But there is no reason to believe our expectations should be limited to these places.

Innovation happens everywhere.

Modern fads and ancient literature

Where would we be without listicles?

Would we even read online?

Well, maybe we have an ancient version of ScreenRant in cuneiform.

At least, that’s explored in what really is a linguistic odyssey — a beautiful and expansive article by LitHub on how information was communicated over the ages in the ancient Mesopotamian world.

Their means of archival gets more advanced as vessels become available to preserve their records.

Our media and our language continue to evolve.

Best Tom Hanks films according to Tom Hanks

The legendary Tom Hanks mentions off-hand in an interview with People Magazine that there are a few good films in the mix in his portfolio.

I’ve made a ton of movies — and four of them are pretty good, I think — and I’m still amazed at how films come together. From a flicker of an idea to the flickering image onscreen, the whole process is a miracle.

How right he is — it’s a miraculous process to make art of that scale and scope.

Obviously, he knows more truly, more empirically than I.

But all the same, it can make your head spin just to think about it.

As for which movies Hanks thinks is best?

In the CNBC article, they note this article as a clue to the movies, wherein he went on the record about his best experiences making a film.

Bill Simmons @BillSimmons

Here are Tom Hanks’s 3 favorite @tomhanks movies. I have Cast Away, Big and Gump, with Bachelor Party, Money Pit and Turner and Hooch as the bubble teams.

There’s a glimmer of an idea he mentions, regarding the difference between the experience making the film and the actual end result.

It’s an interesting point.

Laurence Olivier had a good amount to say comparing the craft of stage and the craft of screen.

You can find more about that in this video:

Songs of Thanksgiving

Though the holiday has come and gone, you might find the topic of Thanksgiving hymnody and psaltery as interesting as I do.

The Conversation published the piece found at the hyperlink above, in which you’ll find a history of gratitude-in-song from the liberation of the Hebrews to the Protestant Reformation.