Hot Dog Still Life

Jeff Rodgers describes the photographic still life by STEPHANIE BLUMENTHAL of Sheffield like this: “We are living in dramatic times, and if you are feeling like me you are feeling like we must do something. How do we respond to the gravity of events unfolding around us? Surely our answer must be bold, rich, and complex. And yet there’s a certain cheapness to (some of) our (American) response right now. The Kool-Aid wants to be dignified, but it’s just absurd. The tabled hot dog thinks it’s something special, but it’s just in a privileged place.” Rodgers is executive director of the Berkshire Museum, and its summer show, “Art of the Hills: Narrative,” including Blumenthal’s photographic Hot Dog Still Life, can be viewed digitally at berkshiremuseum.org. It will open physically at the museum on October 10. Nationally known artists Seung Lee and Amy Myers have curated the show, bringing together 78 works by 64 artists in the region. Their own work moves between organic and abstract, says Rodgers. Myers looks at the subatomic world. She traces the interactions of particles in abstract geometry. And Craig Langlois, Berkshire Museum’s chief experience officer, has known Lee for many years; the patterns he explores in paint, glimmering like translucent trees, or water, or light. Here, they have gathered paintings, photography, glass sculpture, ceramics and more, and visitors can walk through the galleries online. Langlois has created a virtual 3-D rendering of the museum’s rooms, from CAD drawings. You can tour virtually and listen to the curators and artists, including Blumenthal, talk about the work. —Kate Abbott