announcing a STILL fine art collection

announcing a STILL fine art collection

warning: long post.

i’m trying an experiment this year: the short version: i hope to sell a limited number of curated collections of my prints, as an art-quality set, to be shipped in time for the holidays. don’t worry. STILL blog will remain what it has always been, and will not suddenly become a vehicle to sell prints of my work. but i do want to take one day to describe this new project, and then we will return to our regularly scheduled programming.

i get a lot of requests for prints of my work, and i sell quite a few high-resolution digital images to individuals and businesses. but selling digital files sometimes feels as if there is a step missing. i like the physicality of a beautiful ink print on luscious textured rag paper, and i like the deeper connection that happens—the transfer from one human hand to another—when a print that i have looked at, assessed in good light, swept a speck of dust from, and placed carefully into a box for shipping, becomes part of somebody else’s home. i miss that connection, and decided this year that i would like to work with paper and ink again, in a very limited way, under conditions where i can make the final product something that meets my own standards of simple beauty and minimalist calm, and that carries STILL blog into the realm of fine art.

as a result of all of this, i have decided to create a set of seven signed and numbered prints of STILL images that I will be offering for sale. i have curated the images within a complementary color palette, i will have them printed at 11” x 17” by a fine art custom printer, on my favorite, heavy, museum-quality Hahnemühle cotton rag paper, and ship them in a custom-made, archival French folio, timed to arrive anywhere in the world by the upcoming holidays. this first collection will be called the Zen Collection. my goal is not to sell a lot of prints, or make a lot of money, but to sell prints that make me proud, and that i hope will bring some of the spirit of STILL Blog—its love of nature, its craving for simplicity, its invitation to moments of calm—into the homes of a few of my friends among you, in a way that is new and unlike the daily stream of digital images that appear on the blog. the collection will be beautiful and elegant and restful and of collectible fine-art quality, and also, because of all of the above, expensive. there is no way to do this cheaply—not only because every step will be done at the highest level of materials and technique that i can manage, but also because, frankly, i don’t want to try to do it cheaply, or to cut corners to try to create a larger market.

for this first experiment, i simply want to make something as beautiful as i know how, and offer it as a small, art-quality collection curated by the artist herself, and see if there is interest. i could make this more financially viable by offering less expensive individual prints, but i love the idea of this harmonized collection, and i want to try to make something a little bit extraordinary in this particular form. i hope I won’t offend any of you with this foray into new territory. the first images have come back from the printer, and they are breathtakingly beautiful, as i hope you will see above. if  you are interested in a set, please order one online here, by november 30. i will be shipping the collections out around by december 7. thank you again for being yourselves, and for being part of my life.

love,

mary jo

Link to shop: https://still-by-mary-jo-hoffman.myshopify.com/

  • Claudia says:

    I would like to see online options to order but the link does not work. Love your blog, and all that you do!

    reply
    • Oh goodness, I didin’t realize that the links in details were not working. They work when I am logged in as Admin, so it never occurred to me that they might not work otherwise. THANK YOU for brining this to my attention. In the short term, here’s a link to cut and paste: https://still-by-mary-jo-hoffman.myshopify.com/
      And I will try and get my web designer to fix the link throughs for me.
      Thank you Claudia!
      Mary Jo

      reply
  • Nicole E. says:

    I adore this idea. as a fellow creative, to have the artist themselves curate the collection is Fantastic, and part of a story that I as a potential buyer am interested in. You’re 100% correct in your sentiment about the tactile exchange from 1 human to another. I wish you the best in this endeavor and look forward to seeing these curated collections unfold & evolve. (already took a gander at the link – it works now)

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bad hair day

bad hair day

a couple of years ago, i stopped dyeing my hair. i was always a light blonde, so it wasn’t obvious at first, but my hair is gradually coming in white. i don’t feel old yet, though. it’s just that some mornings i wake up and instead of looking like a tousle headed catherine deneuve, i look like a west highland terrier.

milkweed seeds

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the soft underbelly

the soft underbelly

in olive country when the wind blows, the olive trees turn from sage green to silver as they show their undersides and shimmer. in willow country, the same thing happens. these are my two countries. one olive dry. one willow wet. both home.

undersides of weeping willow leaves

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my favorite palette

my favorite palette

john keats says, “give me books, french wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.” i say, “give me olive green, silver sage, lily pad, shoe leather, bronze, and the color of a stick of cinnamon.” john keats was a hack.

weeping willow leaves

  • Sara Ganey says:

    ‘john keats was a hack’ nearly made me do a spit take with my morning cuppa. thanks for the always lovely, occasionally messy start to my day.

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who are you?

who are you?

i had this smoke bush branch set aside as a sort of plan b backup in case i ever needed an emergency STILL blog stand-in. today i needed a plan b stand-in, and so i invited this shrinking violet model into the studio and asked him to take a seat, and then suddenly he took his shirt off, and he was the most beautiful specimen and all i wanted to do was take his portrait over and over and never let him leave. who are you, beautiful stranger? and why haven’t we met before?

smokebush branch with november leaves

  • janice says:

    Gorgeous colors!

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