Do you email the gallery first or just walk in? I did the walk-in and I still cringe
My first real gallery, I walked in. No appointment, portfolio under my arm, bad timing. The woman at the desk was polite in a way that told me everything, and I stood there for maybe four minutes before she said the director was "in a meeting." Which was true, I found out later. It was also a no.
Two years later I got in by email, three sentences and a link, and it took eleven months.
So: do you email first, or do you walk in? And which one has actually worked for you, not which one sounds more professional. I want to know if anyone has a walk-in story that ended well, because I have never once heard one.
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walk-ins are for people who've never been burned yet. the first one's basically a rite of passage, you go in thinking confidence is the whole pitch, and then a polite stranger teaches you in four minutes that it isn't.
email, but not the "here is my three paragraph artist statement" email. the ones that worked for me were genuinely three sentences and a link, same as you. the gallery doesn't want to read, they want to click. and eleven months is normal, galleries move at the speed of a glacier that's also mad at you.
i don't think i've ever heard a walk-in story that ended well that wasn't really just "someone already knew someone." that's the thing nobody says out loud, the walk-in only works if the desk already recognizes your name. otherwise you're just a person standing in a lobby holding a folder, which is a very specific kind of lonely lol
"polite stranger teaches you in four minutes that it isn't" is exactly it. I remember the four minutes more clearly than I remember most openings I've had since, which is its own kind of insult.
The three-sentence email is the thing nobody believes until it works. Everyone I know who got in wrote short. The ones who wrote long were writing to themselves, really, trying to prove something to a room that wasn't reading.
Eleven months. And you spend about ten of them telling yourself it's dead, and then you're in. Genau.