Do you email a gallery with your work or just walk in? I did the walk-in and my hands were shaking
So I have only really done this the one proper time. Last spring I took three pastel portraits to a small gallery here in Kraków, no appointment, no email first, just walked in with them wrapped in tissue in a folder. The woman behind the desk was kind, but I stood there explaining my work with my hands shaking and I am sure I said "probably" about nine times. She took my details and nothing came of it, but I did not die, so.
Now I am trying to decide if that was brave or just stupid. I keep reading that you should email first with a proper portfolio and a short message, but then I read the opposite from people who say a walk-in is the only way anyone actually looks at you.
So which one is it for you. Email or walk in. And if you email, what do you actually put in the first three lines, because mine always end up too long and apologetic.
Honestly I want to know if anyone has had a yes from the walk-in approach, because I am not sure my nerves can do it twice 🙂
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I read your post two times. The shaking hands, that is not stupidity, that is only because the work matters to you. If it did not matter, the hands would not shake.
Myself I am not knowing Kraków or how galleries there are working, so I will not pretend. But I will say this. When I first started taking my Mithila paintings outside Madhubani, I also did the same, going in person with the work wrapped in cloth, no appointment. Some doors opened, many did not. The ones which opened, mostly it was because the person could see the painting in their hand, not a photo on a screen.
Email has one use also, it gives them your name before you come, so you are not a stranger at the desk. But it should not replace the showing. Send the message, then go with the work. Both together is better than either one alone.
And that woman took your details. Nothing came, that time. But she knows your face now. In this work, that is not nothing.
That line about the hands is the truest thing on this whole thread. I've been printing the better part of twenty years and I still get the wobble before a market some mornings, and it's never once been about the money.
The bit I'd push back on, gently, is email being no use. I've had both work. Walked into a place in Sligo years back with a folder of lino proofs under my arm and the woman behind the desk was lovely and took my name and I never heard a thing, and I've also sent an email with three images and got a proper reply the same week. The difference wasn't email or no email, it was whether the person on the other end was actually looking that week. Walk-in gets you a face, which is worth more, but only if the face isn't already up to its eyes.
Your mother's way of it is the honest way though. Work in the hand beats work on a screen, every time, and no template ever saved me a wet morning standing there explaining myself.
Twenty years and still the wobble. That is strangely comforting, thank you. I think I half believed it goes away once you are good, and maybe that is part of why I keep waiting to feel ready before I send anything.
You are right about the "whether" and I was being lazy with it, lumping email into one thing because my one email went nowhere. But yours got a reply the same week, so it was not the email, it was what you put in it and who you sent it to. I have been sending mine to places that were never going to want pastel portraits and then deciding the whole method is broken. That is a bit unfair of me.
The lino proofs in Sligo, still nothing from it. Do you ever wonder if she just lost the paper with your name on it? I think about that woman in Kraków sometimes, whether my details are in a drawer somewhere or in the bin.
"The ones which opened, mostly it was because the person could see the painting in their hand, not a photo on a screen." I keep coming back to this. I sent photos by email once and I know they got looked at on a phone, in a queue somewhere, in bad light. Pastel especially dies in a phone photo, the bloom just goes.
The wrapped in cloth part also gets me. There is something in the carrying of it that is already a kind of statement, no? That it survived the walk.
I will still email first sometimes I think, out of cowardice mostly. But I am not going to pretend the folder under the arm was the wrong way. Thank you for this. And for the not knowing Kraków, I respect that you said so instead of inventing something.