a similar take on a winter walk

Are we winter weary yet? Here in Minnesota, we have almost no snow on the ground, and it was 34 degrees today. It feels like November. And this modest collection of nature bits I gathered today looks more like November than late January to me. All these color, usually hidden by a deep blanket of snow are not only visible but saturated from the damp in they way I associate with late autumn.  I am enjoying the colors, and the lack of ice on the sidewalks, and the relative ease of  running errands without a parka on. But I can’t fully enjoy it. We all know why. No need to spell it out. STILL, after all, is a place to come for a moment of calm. Enough said. Enjoy this typically hidden winter palette.

it’s too early to be winter weary

It is tempting to do a highlights reel of some of my favorite images here for a week while I celebrate by book pre-order launch. Especially since I have a tsunami of emails to reply to after my announcement went out, and I could use the time. But that does not feel in the spirit of STILL. I like to keep it seasonal here. And now is the season of deep winter.

My first-ever STILL photo

In recognition of my announcement yesterday about pre-orders now being available for STILL: The Art of Noticing, I am posting the first ever STILL photo I ever made. I was in southern France, and was toying with the idea of doing a self-imposed one-a-day, one-year creative challenge.  I considered a lot of different options (e.g a-collage-a-day, a-pattern-a-day, a-collection-a-day…). But when I saw this image through my viewfinder, I knew I had found my answer: found nature, daily, on a plain background, photographed in natural light, with a simple and graphic treatment. That was thirteen years ago. Some days, seemingly insignificant at the time, can send your life in a whole new direction. The thing about these inflection points, is that you do not even know that your life just changed direction (that is how they differ from major medical events, for example). It took me maybe two or three years into doing STILL that I realized how monumental that quiet afternoon in southern France was.

wild teasel (Dipsacus)

I interrupt the usual programming to bring you…

Today is the day! My book, STILL: The Art of Noticing, is here. Six essays and over 275 of my images. A book about dailiness, about seasons, about the color white, about an ongoing conversation with nature, about life as a work of art. I am, on one hand solemnly aware of the weight that a book gives to a body of work, and on the other hand, FREAKING GIDDY to share it with you! The official release date is May 1, 2024, but the book is available everywhere for pre-order now (including internationally). Simply google “STILL: The Art of Noticing by Mary Jo Hoffman” to pre-order from your bookseller of choice (pre-orders are a really big deal in the current publishing environment), and please share this with anyone you think would be interested. The books will arrive in time for Mother’s Day gift giving–just saying.

Thank you, everybody, for being a part of this. I am in love with this gentle-hearted community. In stillness, Mary Jo

#stilltheartofnoticing

I wrote you a poem

Leaning into my store of pressed leaves as I wait out this cold snap. Remember my forays into asemic writing? It was a fun constraint to play with. If you are new here: here is how wiki defines asemic writing:

Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means “having no specific semantic content”, or “without the smallest unit of meaning”. With the non-specificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning, which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art. Where asemic writing distinguishes itself among traditions of abstract art is in the asemic author’s use of gestural constraint, and the retention of physical characteristics of writing such as lines and symbols. Asemic writing is a hybrid art form that fuses text and image into a unity, and then sets it free to arbitrary subjective interpretations

pressed leaf asemic writing