Jay Bolotin was an ambitious and exacting artist who regularly crossed disciplines including visual art, literature, theatre, music, and film. Weaving together personal musings and universal myths, he formed epic narratives requiring years of labor-intensive studio activity and the mastering of both traditional and state-of-the-art techniques. A gifted storyteller, he was informed by children’s bedtime reading, Biblical tales (and their interpretation), and the writings of the Brothers Grimm, Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, and Flannery O’Connor, among others. Oral histories and songs from his upbringing in Fayette County, Kentucky, also played a role in his development.  

 

William Blake and Lewis Carroll are often discussed as influences on Bolotin’s oeuvre, and like them, he revels in upending expectations about what is real and meaningful. The characters in his various projects make journeys, encounter fantastic beings and locales, overcome obstacles, and find varying degrees of enlightenment. In his precise rendering of an indelible imaginary world, Bolotin shares affinities with art and popular culture milestones including Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle, Henry Darger’s The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

 

The UK Art Museum is proud to have several examples of Bolotin’s woodcut prints and polychrome sculptures in our collection; and in 2020, we made a commitment to help finance the completion of his film-in-progress, The Jackleg Testament, Part 2: The Book of Only Enoch. Our plan was to exhibit prints, drawings, sculptures, and sets that were essential components in the finished production. Working tirelessly on it while enduring a long illness, Bolotin died on May 14, 2024.  

 

This exhibition begins with a selection of woodcut prints from The Jackleg Testament, Part I: Jack & Eve (2004–05), in which Bolotin illustrates his own rewritten account of The Book of Genesis. He proceeded to use this portfolio (with its parts of figures, architecture, costumes, and scenery) in digitized form to make a feature-length film of the same title.  

 

The entire portfolio of The Book of Only Enoch follows, in which woodcut and intaglio etching combine to tell the story of Only Enoch, a sensitive Jewish boy from Kentucky who leaves home in search of adventure and self-awareness. Graphite drawings expand on the imagery in the prints, as Bolotin imagines each of his protagonists: Narrator, The Puppeteer, The Willing Girl, and Father Wee and his daughters, to name a few.  

 

The action in the film takes place within an Appalachian village filled with weathered buildings, cobblestone streets, a gas station, and a junk shop. Bolotin painstakingly constructed each set using wood, plaster, steel, and found materials; their distorted expressionist architecture has a Cabinet of Dr. Caligari-esque feeling of uncertainty. We present several of these, along with discreet sculptures, and the green screen fabric stands that Bolotin used for various visual effects in the film. Several completed scenes are projected in an adjacent screening room. 

 

To engage with Jay Bolotin’s art is to commit to active looking, reading, and pondering—and accepting that you may never comprehend the varied references within the works. The richness of our encounters with the artist’s endeavors—the profundity, magic, and craftsmanship—is a gift that keeps on giving.  

 

Special thanks to Michael Solway and Aaron Delamarte at Solway Gallery, along with Emily Sites and Joseph Winterhalter, for their generous support and assistance. Appreciation and thanks to Alice Gray Stites and Juli Lowe at 21C Museum Hotels for lending Bolotin works to the exhibition. Funds from VisitLex, UK College of Fine Arts, Art Shechet and Marilyn Robie, Christine and Michael Huskisson, Steve Bloomfield, and Kathy Prescott have made this project possible.  

 

IMAGE: Jay Bolotin, Vanity from The Book of Only Enoch, 2011–14, woodcut and etching on paper. Courtesy of Solway Gallery.