Do you email a gallery first, or walk in with work under your arm?
A question I keep turning over, because I have done both and come to a firm conclusion.
Early on I did the walk-in. A small gallery in a town I was passing through, a folder of mounted sheets, and the owner was perfectly kind and entirely uninterested. Nothing came of it, and I spent the rest of the afternoon annoyed at myself rather than at him. Since then I have sent a short, careful email with three images and a link, and let the work wait. Two of my three representation enquiries that went anywhere began that way.
I also keep the folder ready on the off chance. That is not the same as marching in with it.
The reason I ask is that there is a certain kind of advice floating about that insists on the personal touch, that the walk-in shows initiative, and I have never once seen it work in the way people claim. I would happily be told I am wrong. Perhaps it depends on the sort of gallery.
So: which one do you do, and what did it actually get you? I am more interested in the failures than the successes, if I am honest.
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The part about being annoyed at yourself and not him is the honest bit, that is the actual cost of the walk-in. I've done it twice, once with a box of vessels wrapped in a bedsheet because I left the proper packing at home, and I could feel the guy deciding before I even opened it. Email lets you control the first twenty seconds, which is all you really get.
But I half-disagree with you on the folder. I keep mine mostly for the markets now, not galleries. Different audience, and honestly the people at a market are the ones who actually buy, so the walk-in stopped feeling like a rejection and started feeling like practice. Maybe the conclusion isn't email vs walk-in, it's that the folder was never for galleries at all.
The bedsheet is a detail I will not forget, and you are right that he had decided before the box was open. That is the thing about a walk-in: you have handed over the first twenty seconds to chance and to whatever mood the person was already in.
I will concede the folder point, though. I had been thinking of it as a gallery tool, and you are describing it as something else entirely, which is more sensible. A folder at a market is doing an honest job. A folder in a gallery is mostly a prop for my own nerves, and I suspect I keep it for that reason more than any other.