Vicksburg artist and gallery owner H.C. Porter is starting a project that merges art, storytelling and the blues.

For “Blues@Home,” Porter is teaming with Tena Clark, a fellow Mississippi native and veteran recording artist and producer. Clark has written and produced for such singers such as Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle and Dionne Warwick.

Porter and Clark are traveling Mississippi to interview and depict 40 legendary blues artists in their hometowns, telling the stories of their lives and the music that made them and the region famous.

“We don’t want performance shots,” said Porter, who operates a gallery on Washington Street. “We want intimate, personal portraits, behind the scenes, of these individual personalities.”

Through a technique that uses photography, print-making and painting to create portraits, Porter will give a glimpse into the lives of T Model Ford and David “Honeyboy” Edwards and, hopefully, B.B. King. The end result will be an interactive exhibit in which the viewer can look at the portraits and listen to the musicians sharing their stories.

“Blues@Home” comes three years after Porter’s “Backyards and Beyond: Mississippians and Their Stories,” comprised of a series of paintings translated from photographs taken on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. The storm hit Aug. 29, 2005, and the exhibit premiered in the spring of 2008.

“My goal for (“Blues@Home”) is to express in paint the sensation the bluesmen left upon me with their private lives, personalities and distinct musical form,” Porter said.

The project is in the beginning stages. So far, Porter has taken pictures of seven bluesmen. One of the hard parts, Porter said she and Lauchlin Fields, director of the H.C. Porter Gallery and field recorder for the project, have discovered is that their original list of bluesmen keeps changing — four have died, and others live out of state or are difficult to track down.

Later this year, Clark will record and produce the music for the project. The compilation album she puts together will act as soundtrack.

A major goal of “Blues@Home” is to capture music in the paintings.

“In the rhythm or way that I paint, I am hoping to reflect the actual blues,” Porter said. “I have always been a storyteller.”

Porter is looking to fund the project through donations. The cost for one painting is $5,000, she said. Her target date to finish the pieces is within 18 months.

When she is finished and Clark has completed the soundtrack, they are hoping to debut the works at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Then, the exhibit will go on tour.

“My goal is to raise awareness of what Mississippi’s bluesmen have,” Porter said, “and still are contributing to our community and our nation’s music.”