The Jackleg Testament

March 31-May 12, free, Morris Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 118 N. Broad St., 215-972-7600, pafa.org.

by Holly Otterbein

visual art/film

It's presumptuous to ask an artist why he prefers one method to another — "to each man his own medium" could be the de facto motto of the community. Still, it seems arduous for Jay Bolotin to have made an hourlong film completely out of woodcuts, a medium usually reserved for printmaking. The film took him six years to finish. So I popped the question, even if it's an artsy faux pas. "Even a word, when cut into wood, seems to have an achieved education," Bolotin says. "A right to exist."

Everything in the film — the characters, their clothing, the walls, the grass, the sky — is a woodcut, so it does seem to have that right, if only because of the great skill and time invested in it. The resulting narrative is a dark biblical adaptation, in which Eve strays from the Garden of Eden because of a tempting jack-in-the-box. Set to an operatic score, The Jackleg Testament is like an even more bizarre The Nightmare Before Christmas, in which Christianity is messed with, a shadow is cast and the stringy, grotesque characters are somehow made beautiful.

March 31-May 12, free, Morris Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 118 N. Broad St., 215-972-7600, pafa.org.