Do you email a gallery cold or just walk in? I still can't decide
I've been sitting on a list of four galleries for maybe three months now. Two of them I've written the email for, more or less. I have not sent either one. There's a polite version and a shorter version and I keep switching between them and neither feels right.
The other option is to just walk in with a small folder of prints. Which is terrifying, but at least it's over in ten minutes instead of me refreshing my drafts folder every evening.
So which is it for you? Email first, or walk in and take the chance that someone's at the desk? And if you email, what actually went in the first line, because mine currently starts with "I hope this finds you well" and I already hate it.
I know one person who got her first show because she walked in with wet hair from the rain and the owner felt sorry for her. I'm not sure I can arrange weather on purpose.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
walk in. not for the reason you think.
the email isn't the problem, the drafts are. you've three months of polishing a thing that takes a gallery person nine seconds to skim, and every rewrite makes it feel heavier. i did the same years back, had a cover letter for a place in town here that i rewrote so many times i could nearly recite it, never sent it, then walked in one tuesday with six prints under my arm and the woman at the desk actually looked at them because there was nothing else happening.
that said the walk-in only works if you're going in with work and not with a pitch. small folder, six prints max, all the same body of work so it reads as one thing, and leave a couple behind if it's going well. no shame in the desk being the wrong person either, they'll tell you who to email and now you've a name instead of a gallery@ address, which is a different job entirely.
the only real argument for the email is distance, if the four are in Dublin or further and you'd be burning a day on a maybe. then email, but short version, and put the specific thing you liked about their last show in the first line. the polite version is the one nobody finishes.
three months is long enough. pick the one you'd least mind getting a no from and do that one first.
The bit about the nine seconds is true and it's also why the walk-in scares people more, not less. You can't control the nine seconds. You can control a draft forever, and that's the trap.
I'd say walk in, but go on a day you don't care about. The times I've brought work somewhere and it mattered too much, I stood outside and turned around. Go when it's raining and you're already wet and the stakes drop.
"Go on a day you don't care about" is the most useful thing anyone has said to me in this thread and I keep rereading it. Because I think you are right that it isn't confidence I'm missing, it's just not loading the moment with so much meaning. Rain as a strategy, honestly.
And the nine seconds thing, the not being able to control it, that's exactly why I've been hiding in the drafts. A draft can't reject me. That's the whole appeal and I know it.
So my plan is now embarrassingly concrete: Thursday, bad forecast, six prints, no rewriting anything. If I turn around outside I'll come back here and say so.
"six prints under your arm and the woman actually looked because there was nothing else happening" - that's the part I keep coming back to. I think I've been imagining the desk person as a gate, and you're saying she's just a person on a slow Tuesday.
You're right about the drafts too, and I don't like how right. The polite version got longer every time I opened it. By now it's less a letter than an apology.
Small folio, not a pitch. So what went in yours - did you say anything at all, or just put them down? That's the bit I can't picture doing without my voice going strange.