Calling all Madisonians who build community and local economy, connect with their land and achieve self-empowerment who make this city and bioregion a special place . . .

A major participatory series of aesthetic self-documentation grows at an artisanal pace, titled:

The Faces of Madtown

A Portrait-Story Project of The City of Four Lakes

more simply knowable as The Madison Portrait-Stories.

Given the ubiquity of invitation, Portrait-Story subjects include themselves as the protagonists upon the stages they draft; more simply, you write rough draft(s), choose to get “portraited” then write on the portrait of yourself—thus occurs a Portrait-Story.

To become a writer of Portrait-Stories one must contact the drawer-painter of Portrait-Stories face-to-face as he pedals the MadCity Isthmus and vicinity, his portable “studio” in tow, or e-mail wanderer@riseup.net

E-mails not clearly expressing intent to embody The Portrait-Story Project likely won't get answered.

Those who consider writing Portrait-Stories are presented with hardcopy of The Mission Statement of The Portrait-Story Project, Guidelines for Writing, and a Title of Approval which explains the status of the end result as intellectual commonwealth, to exhibit publically and potentially to proliferate wildly.

To read our Mission Statement: portraitstoryproject.org

To glimpse the broadness:

Reviews and other links:

The fine art hardback The Post-Katrina Portraits: Written and Narrated by Hundreds has also been sprinkled around Madtown as an outreach tool. If in Madtown, you can find it quickly, ask around the “information dirt road”.

Non-Portrait-Story work by the Portrait-Story artist:

Thank you to the Madison Community Co-operative for hosting the artist of Portrait-Stories.

And to for launching this website.

And to all who have donated art supplies, too many wonderful people, many met too randomly, to have kept track of or name.