This Friday, November 21st, Blues @ Home, an incredibly moving exhibition showcasing the sound and fury of the Mississippi blues, will open in Vicksburg. Wildly talented artist, H.C. Porter, will proudly present her documentary collection of portraits and voices of Mississippi’s living blues at 16 different locations in Vicksburg, plus the H.C. Porter Gallery. The exhibition will be open through Saturday, December 6th.
“From living rooms to home studios, juke joints and a chicken coup, this exhibition by H.C. Porter goes beyond the music to give the visitor a human experience, revealing the true grit and spirit of each blues legend,” boasts the Vicksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau.
| 
|
The artist behind the work is rather impressive. As a child, Porter’s mother was a great painter and a wonderfully creative influence on her daughter. As her mother often put brush to paper, Porter fondly remembers her home filled with the pungent smell of turpentine. “She enrolled me in a local art class where I learned to draw Snoopy with perspective and make clay knick-knacks from molds…it was heaven for me,” says Porter. By the time she reached the second grade, Porter knew she wanted to be an artist.
Porter perfected her craft in high school, and recalls painting and drawing through lunch, then paying her younger sister an hourly wage to sit and model for drawings. With her impressive portfolio, Porter received an art scholarship to the University of Alabama, where she studied painting, sculpture, clay and photography. She apprenticed with a well-known artist in Tuscaloosa, Rick Rush, and was exposed to the silkscreen printmaking process. Porter was hooked.
After graduating from college, she returned to her roots in Jackson and created a studio in the basement of her grandmother’s home. “I would paint or print anything to earn the 25 dollars a month rent my grandmother charged me to keep me honest! I also could only print on days her ladies clubs weren’t meeting upstairs because my fumes would waft up through the floorboards and create nausea, dizzy spells and general malaise when they had major decisions to make, as my grandfather liked to tease, about pie,” Porter laughs.
| 
|
She soon moved to Millsaps Avenue and joined the growing art movement in Jackson in the late 1980’s. Local children began wandering in and out of her studio desiring to paint, so she started Avenue for Art, offering kids basic art classes. She also began photographing her neighbors and documenting their lives. Suddenly, her signature style was born. She recalls, “I soon had what I considered powerful portraits of a challenged, struggling community with a strong sense of spirituality, adaptability and strength. But, with these photographs in hand I didn’t want to just be a photographer or just a painter, so I relied on silkscreen to allow me to combine the two.”
Porter became widely recognized as an extraordinary artist with her Backyards and Beyond: Mississippians and Their Stories exhibition in 2008. The exhibit featured paintings and stories of Hurricane Katrina survivors. Driving home from a walk through of the exhibit at Delta State University, she drove along Highway 61 in Cleveland and watched the sunset create a beautiful painting across the delta sky. She realized she had never told the story of the Delta and the blues, and Blues @ Home was born.
| 
|
In her Blues @ Home exhibition, Mississippi’s finest blues legends leap to life in Porter’s striking works of art. Porter created these masterpieces using her signature mixed media process, combining painting, printmaking and photography. “I make up the color in each piece, bringing a sense of hope through the use of vibrant color and joyful music,” says Porter. The finished works are handsome, intimate portraits of talented musicians.
Porter says, “With my artwork, I have always had a deep desire to bring attention to the human spirit that thrives in Mississippi. Created with fire in the midst of fundamentalism and impoverishment, we were the last mysterious state. With the Blues @ Home exhibition, I am able to define moments of both our past and our present musical heritage helping us understand and celebrate the place we love to call home!”
Thirty powerful portraits will be paired with oral histories, spoken in each legend’s soulful voice. We invite you to take this incredible journey that “details the rich textured lives and musical knowledge born and lived out chopping cotton and plowing the fields, a strong and passionate, but oppressed people, living the four main themes of the blues: orphaning, homelessness, injustice and sexual conflict,” says Porter.
Porter hopes to turn the Blues @ Home exhibition into a book within the next year, and is already dreaming up future projects. “There is a trailer park in Rolling Fork that whispers my name every time I drive past it. It has Mississippi stories it wants to tell and I might be up for listening. Anyone want to go with me?” says Porter. We will certainly be along for the ride.
{Blog by Mitchell Walters}
RSS Feed