Vicksburg artist H.C. Porter cares about people and on Oct. 10, during the Mississippi State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, she was recognized as an Honored Artist for 2024. Porter was chosen, in part, because of her dedication to taking on important issues that showcase the resilience and creativity of Mississippians.

“As an artist I am always honored when an individual chooses to live with my work… but for my work to be recognized by fellow artists is truly special and humbling for me,” Porter said.

Porter, who is resident artist and master printmaker of the H.C. Porter Gallery and Creative Spirit Studio located on Washington Street, captured images while Karole Sessums recorded the stories of people on the Mississippi Gulf coast in the 12 months after Hurricane Katrina. This work became the backdrop for a large, national traveling exhibition of paintings and voices called “Backyards & Beyond: Mississippians and their Stories.” The exhibition and book contained 81 paintings, an audio interview, quotes and stories from Mississippians all along the coast. In 2015, the series became a permanent exhibition in Waveland at the Ground Zero Hurricane Museum.

In recognizing her contributions, Porter said some of the words used to describe her work — “the courage it took to show Mississippians their resilience and creativity,” — were words she had never thought of before. “That somebody recognized that it was courageous to take on leaving everything in my life to focus on telling Mississippi’s experience after Hurricane Katrina with my artwork, it really moved me on lots of levels. For me, it wasn’t courage. It took faith I was doing what I was called to do and God made it easy. He put people in my path that repeatedly said, ‘go to the Gulf Coast and allow your work to tell the story of what is happening on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.’”

Porter launched another traveling exhibition in 2015: “Blues@Home: Mississippi’s Living Blues Legends.” This two-year collaboration with Lauchlin Fields covered the entire state to document the landscape of the blues with not only a collection of 31 paintings, but also firsthand accounts from blues legends themselves.

Chairman of the NMWA Mississippi State Committee Nancy Branton described Porter’s works as a “photograph of reality as we see it.”

“But then she transforms it into a pivotal moment instilled with grace and dignity — the figure becomes distilled in time and takes on a mythical personification of distress, or glee, or sadness, or endurance, or bashed hope. They become symbolic, iconic images,” Branton said.

In addition to her traveling exhibitions, Porter has also worked with neighborhood art programs for underprivileged children and with sports artists making limited edition serigraphs for NBC Sports, Wimbledon, Churchill Downs and the NFL.

Porter’s artwork is in private and corporate collections around the world and has been featured in more than 50 juried exhibitions across the U.S. for the past 30 years. It has hung in the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.; American Vision Gallery in New York City; and Galerie Amanni in Toulouse, France. It has been featured on CD covers of “Zydeco” and “Songs of Souls” featuring the voices of Mayo Angelou, Pattie LaBelle and Chaka Khan. Most recently the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. added one of her pieces to its collection. Her work also hangs in the Mississippi Senate offices in D.C. and is in the collection of former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. 

Porter holds a BFA in painting and photography from the University of Alabama and received a MIAL award, a fellowship from the MS Arts Commission, and has been included in the invitational show at the MS Museum of Art.

Porter said she has not yet started another large undertaking.

“I am still waiting for the next story I am supposed to tell with my work. So, stay tuned.”