do you email galleries or just walk in?
I walked into one unannounced last spring because the door was open and I had ten minutes to kill before a bus. Ended up talking to the owner for half an hour about a broken chair in the window. No show, but she remembered me when I emailed six months later, which is more than I can say for the four polished intro emails I sent that year.
So I'm curious which one actually works for people. Email or in person? And if you email, how long is it? Mine is three sentences and I still feel like I'm groveling.
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Honestly the chair thing is the whole answer. She remembered you because you were a person in her space talking about something real, not a PDF with your CV attached. I've done both and the walk-ins are the only ones that ever turned into anything, even when nothing came of the visit itself.
That said I'm not brave enough to just show up cold, so I've landed on emailing and then going in anyway. And yeah three sentences still feels like groveling because it IS groveling, structurally. You're asking permission to exist in their building. I've stopped trying to make it not feel that way and just keep it short and specific instead, one thing about their program that's actually true and one line about what I do. The polished version where I pretend I'm not nervous reads worse, I think they can smell it.
"structurally it IS groveling" is going to live in my head rent free, thank you. you're right though, the framing helps. if I stop pretending the email is a pitch and just treat it as a heads up that I'm coming by, it's a much shorter email and I stop editing it for an hour.
email then going in anyway is probably the actual move. the email does the nervous part for me and the visit does the part that sticks.