Fast Forward Film Series

Based on a series of woodcuts, The Jackleg Testament Part I: Jack & Eve is an animated, operatic film–the first known woodcut motion picture–that reinterprets the story of Adam and Eve as a dark, provocative tale in which Eve is lured from the Garden of Eden by a Jack-in-the-Box. Bolotin’s complex, ambiguous work references German Expressionism, American folk art, prints from the Northern Renaissance, and medieval religious imagery.

Mr. Sousaphone Man, a former vaudeville actor turned wilderness guide, returns home in hopes of relaxing with his favorite aria from Georges Bizet's Carmen. The characters he passes on his way home, and his own character, alas, pervade the aria and force him back into the unknown. Bizet's Carmen is set in Seville around the year 1830. The opera deals with the love and jealousy of Don José, who is lured away from his duty as a soldier and his beloved Micaëla by the gypsy factory-girl Carmen, whom he allows to escape from custody. He is later induced to join the smugglers with whom Carmen is associated, but is driven wild by jealousy. This comes to a head when Carmen makes clear her preference for the bull-fighter Escamillo. The last act, outside the bullring in Seville, brings Escamillo to the arena, accompanied by Carmen, there stabbed to death by Don José, who has been awaiting her arrival.

As a youth in rural Fayette County, Kentucky, Jay Bolotin made sculpture from fallen trees and experienced the work of artists like Henry Moore through illustrated magazines. Wanting to “make things that expressed what was otherwise without expression,” he studied art, first at the Rhode Island School of Design, and then as an apprentice to the late sculptor Robert Lamb. In the early 1970s, he pursued his interest in music, working as a songwriter with Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, and Dan Fogelberg.

The personal and narrative quality in Bolotin’s work as a musician is paralleled in his visual art. The viewer encounters characters who are embroiled in psychologically intricate dramas, and these characters appear—and reappear—in multiple pieces, created in a variety of media. This interdisciplinary approach to his art has provided the foundation for Bolotin’s multilayered, performance-based works that include plays, operas, films, and a music-theater-dance collaboration.

At the suggestion of his friend and long-time gallerist, Carl Solway, Bolotin began making prints in the early 1980s. Although he tried different media, the directness of woodcut appealed to him, and it has been a major component of his visual art ever since. Bolotin’s art work is represented in the collections of The New York Public Library; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Seattle Art Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum, and numerous other public and private collections. He resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.