Smut Today
Smut Today is a free monthly paper and electronic publication of erotic artwork and art writing by contributing Maine artists. In addition to being mailed electronically to people who sign up for it, Smut Today will be distributed to businesses and organizations in the Portland area and beyond. The project takes local advertising vehicle papers such as Coffee News, a single sheet publication with light stories, astrology readings and more, as its aesthetic inspiration. The hope is that while the title would warn potential audience members of the explicit content of the paper, the format would be intriguing and mysterious, a window of extreme personal intimacy disguised as a mundane capitalist object. Each edition of the paper would feature at least 2 visual artists and 2 writers.
Artist bio(s):
Amelia Garretson-Persans is an interdisciplinary artist based in southern Maine. She received her BFA in Studio Art from Concordia University in Montreal and her MFA from the Maine College of Art in Portland, Maine. She has shown work in Maine, New York, Tennessee, Quebec, and elsewhere. Her residencies include the Digital Narratives residency at the Banff Centre in Alberta, the Jenny Family Residency in Nova Scotia and the Stephen Pace House in Stonington, Maine. She is passionate about creative collaboration and community engagement and helped produce dozens of short films by directors with disabilities while at Bomb Diggity Arts (2014-2022) as well as a dynamic slate of public programming. In 2018 she co-created the In Her Kitchen series which partnered Maine College of Art & Design students with immigrant chefs from In Her Presence to create visually engaging recipe videos and elevate the voices of immigrant women. She is lives in Southern Maine with her two children.
Image: Amelia Garretson-Persans, Film still of footage of myself performing under footage I collected in Baie Ste. Marie, Nova Scotia, 2022.