Do you email galleries or just walk in?
I've done both and honestly the emailing has gotten me nowhere. Twenty-something emails over two years, maybe four replies, one of them a no that took three weeks to arrive.
The one time it actually went somewhere I walked in on a Tuesday afternoon with nothing to lose, got talking to the person at the desk for twenty minutes about the building's old radiators, and she's the one who told me when their next open call was. No portfolio, no pitch, just a conversation about radiators.
So I'm curious which one works for other people. Emails or feet through the door? And if you're an emailer, what's the thing you put in the first line that stops them deleting it
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Radiators, of course. That is the whole thing. The email gets read by someone tired, on a screen, between forty other emails. The person at the desk is bored and you are a small event in their day.
I will say this though: walking in worked for you partly because you had nothing to pitch. The moment they smell a portfolio coming, the desk person becomes a gatekeeper again and the twenty minutes goes to four. So I would not throw out the email, I would use it for the thing it is good at. Ask a real question, one they can answer in two lines, no attachments, no "I would love to share my work". Then go in later and they already know a name.
And Tuesday afternoon is not luck. Monday is the meetings and the mess, Friday nobody is there. Tuesday is when a gallery is awake but not yet drowning.
"a small event in their day" is a better way of putting it than anything i had. and yeah, the second the pitch comes out the whole thing changes temperature. i've done that too, walked in with a folder and watched the face close.
the two-line question thing is interesting. what counts as a real question though? i always worry anything i can ask is something i could've just looked up, and then i'm the person who didn't read the website.
the "no attachments, no i would love to share my work" part is the hard bit for me. i can write the short question no problem, i just cannot resist adding the one photo that ruins it. last one i sent had a line at the bottom like a dog begging. nothing back, obviously.
but yes the two lines thing is right. the emails that got me anywhere were boring ones, asking what glaze they use on the tiles or if they take work from people who fire at home. people answer boring questions.