Esther, from the book Cane

Jean Toomer’s 1923 experimental novel about Georgian agrarian folk culture and the rapid rise of American urbanization is a thematically unified amalgam of poetry, drama, and narrative prose. In 2000 Martin Puryear designed a set of seven woodblock prints to accompany Arion Press’s deluxe edition of this prized product of the Harlem Renaissance. Named after different characters in Toomer’s book, Puryear’s prints represent abstract portraits of seven female figures, six of which are exhibited here. Both gestural as well as geometric, the portraits collapse visual distinctions between the abstract and the figurative in a way that mimics Toomer’s narrative integration of poetry and prose.