Anyone else get their first yes from somewhere that was definitely not a gallery?
My first yes was a barber. I'm not joking. I'd been carrying a portfolio around for weeks, getting the polite nod, and one day I'm sitting in a chair getting my hair cut and the guy behind me just goes "wait, YOU do that?" and points at a photo I'd left open on my phone. Two weeks later nine charcoal pieces were up between the mirrors. People got their fades with a screaming face staring at them.
I still think about it. The guy who cuts hair said yes before any gallery even looked at me.
So where did YOUR first yes come from? A cafe, a friend's wall, a dentist, your mom's coworker, a bar you drink at. Anywhere counts. The less it looked like a gallery the better, honestly.
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The barber thing actually makes sense to me, he spends all day looking at people and telling them what will suit them. That is basically curation. Mine was a dentist's waiting room, which sounds sadder than it is. He had a bare wall behind the reception and I asked, half joking, and he said yes before I finished the sentence. Six pastel portraits hung there for two years. Nobody ever bought one but people kept asking if I was the one who did them, which was honestly the first time I felt like an artist rather than a person with expensive paper. Strange where the first yes comes from. The galleries were never the ones who said it.
Your dentist said yes before you finished the sentence because he had already decided it was fine and was mostly relieved you weren't asking for money. Mine was the man who ran the scrapyard I bought metal from. He let me hang four welded pieces on the fence by the gate, between the sign with the opening hours and a dead satellite dish. It rained on them for a year. I still think that fence did more for the work than the first gallery did.
A scrapyard fence. Between the opening hours and a dead satellite dish. That's better than anything I could've made up, and the rain is the best part. A year of weather on welded steel, no climate control, no wall text, no one standing there with a glass of cheap wine deciding if it's "resolved." Just the work and whatever the sky did to it.
I get why you'd still rate that fence higher. Galleries want the work to be finished. A fence doesn't care if it is. Mine had mirrors and fluorescent light and a guy named D talking over a customer's head about my faces like I was in the room. Nobody asked my charcoals for permission to exist. Your fence didn't either.
"basically curation" is going to live in my head rent free, thank you for that. but honestly the dentist thing is not sadder, that's the whole point. two years on a wall where people are stuck waiting and nervous and staring at nothing, and they chose to stare at YOUR faces instead. six pastel portraits. nobody bought one and they still asked who did it. that's not a failed sale, that's an audience. mine hung between mirrors and got stared at by guys getting fades and I'd take that over a white cube any day. what were the pastels of, out of curiosity? people you knew or strangers?