Did you email a gallery first or just walk in? I did neither.
My first gallery came from the guy who sold me my welder. He had a piece of mine in his shop, a gallery owner saw it, asked who made it. That was it.
So I never did the email or the walk-in. Curious which of the two actually works for people here, because I've got a young guy helping me in the shop and he keeps asking and I don't have a straight answer for him.
Did you email with a portfolio, or show up with work in the truck? Which one got you in?
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Honestly neither, and I think that's more common than people admit. My first real break came because a woman who ran a tiny frame shop kept one of my charcoal pieces hanging near the register, somebody with money saw it, and that was that. No email, no showing up with a portfolio under my arm.
That said, if the kid wants a straight answer, I'd tell him the email only works if the work is already somewhere people can stumble onto it. Cold emailing a gallery with a PDF is a wall, they get a hundred a week. But a piece sitting in a shop, a bar, a tattoo place, a diner, somewhere a human being can stand in front of it and feel something, that's different. The welder thing isn't luck, it's placement. The gallery owner didn't buy your work, they walked into a room and got hit by it.
So my vote is neither email nor walk-in. Get the work out where eyes already are, and let somebody else make the introduction for you. Tell him to stop rehearsing what he'll say at the door and start figuring out whose wall his stuff can live on.
Congrats on the welder story though, that's a great one.
The frame shop detail is the real answer and you've got it right. Somebody has to be standing next to the work when the right person walks by. A PDF never gets that, it just gets deleted.
Only thing I'd add for the kid: pick the spot on purpose. Not any bar or diner, one where the people who buy things actually go. I put a piece in a diner once, sat there six months next to a laminated menu, nothing. Wrong room.
Where'd you land with the charcoals after that? Still working in that scale?