University of Richmond Museums presents Jay Bolotin: The Jackleg Testament Continues an exhibition on view Wednesday, August 21 to Tuesday, October 22, 2013, at the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, that crosses many disciplines, including visual art, theatre, film, and music.
The exhibition features interrelated parts: two print portfolios, a woodcut motion picture, and Kharmen, the prologue of a new operatic animation film based on graphite drawings. He applies the densely layered narratives, imagery, and iconography of his prints, songs, drawings, and performances as a musician to the medium of animation. In his art, he inter-weaves his Judeo-Christian creation stories and personal mythologies to better understand and to comment on the human condition.
Raised on a farm in rural Kentucky, Bolotin’s childhood was filled with storytelling and music, both of which influenced his artwork. He studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design and served as an apprentice to sculptor Robert Lamb. In the early 1970s, he pursued his interest in music, working as a songwriter with Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, and Dan Fogleberg.
The personal and narrative quality in Bolotin’s work as a musician is paralleled in his visual art. The viewer encounters characters 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.
The exhibition features The Jackleg Testament Part I: Jack and Eve, an animated, operatic film 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.
The Jackleg Testament Part II: The Book of Only Enoch is also featured in the exhibition. Bolotin annotates the drawings included in Part II by writing directly on the walls of the gallery, giving the viewer a sense of the progression of the storyline. The story is inspired by books of the Old Testament which are not included in the accepted version of the text. Enoch is a man “who went to Heaven and lived to tell the tale.” Bolotin renames this character “Only Enoch” who is the son of the only Jewish coal miner in Kentucky.
Kharmen, a twenty-minute animation will also be view. Kharmen was created through the digital manipulation of original graphite drawings inspired by the 1875 opera Carmen, and other Bolotin created characters.
Bolotin’s artwork is represented in the collections of The New York Public Library; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Seattle Art Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum, Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University of Richmond Museums, and numerous other public and private collections. He resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Organized by the University of Richmond Museums and curated by Richard Waller, Executive Director, University Museums, the exhibition and related programs are made possible in part with funds from the Louis S. Booth Arts Fund. http://museums.richmond.edu
