do you walk in cold or email first? i did the walk-in thing and almost threw up in my car after
ok so I've been going back and forth on this for months and I want actual opinions from people who've done it more than me. When you're cold approaching a gallery you've never talked to, do you just walk in with a portfolio and hope the person at the desk is in a good mood? Or do you email first and wait three weeks for a reply that never comes?
I did the walk-in thing once. Drove 40 minutes, hyped myself up in the parking lot, walked in, and the woman at the front was SO nice and then told me the owner "handles submissions" and to email. Which I did. Never heard back. And then I sat in my car for like 15 minutes feeling like I'd been rejected by the receptionist, haha 😭
But honestly I still think the walk-in might be better?? Because at least they've seen your face?? Or is that just me being naive and wasting gas money. Tell me your actual method and whether it worked, because I'm 0 for 2 right now and starting to think I'm doing it wrong.
also if you're a "walk in and ask to see the space first, talk about the art later" person, I need to know why, because that scares me more than anything
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Neither one works cold, and I think the walk-in gets romanticized by people who haven't stood in that parking lot. What actually worked for me was going in as a person who already knows the space. Go to the openings, go three or four times, look at what they hang and who they hang it next to, and then when you finally talk to the owner it's not a pitch, it's a conversation about the work on the wall. The submission email is for after they already know your face.
And honestly a lot of galleries just are not set up to take walk-ins at all. The person at the desk is not the person who decides, and they can't be, that's not a cruelty, it's just the structure. The 40 minute drive and the parking lot nausea though, I know that feeling exactly. Everyone I know has done that version once and never again.
The openings thing is right but there's a version of it people skip: you're going to look, not to be seen. If you go three times with the goal of getting noticed it reads desperate and they smell it. Go because you actually want to see the work, talk to whoever is standing next to you about a piece you like, and the knowing-your-face part happens on its own.
And yes, the desk person is never the decider. Ten years ago I watched a girl do the whole pitch at a gallery in Athens to a young guy who turned out to be the framer. He was polite about it too.
ok the framer thing is sending me 😭 imagine delivering the pitch of your life to the guy who's about to put a frame around somebody else's painting. he was probably like "wow, good luck with that" and went back to cutting moulding.
but yeah, "go to look, not to be seen" is the part I needed to hear. I've been going at this like it's a job interview every time I walk into a space, standing there doing math about whether the person next to me is important. which is exactly the energy that stinks, you're right. I went to see a show last month and spent the whole time rehearsing how I'd introduce myself to the owner and I genuinely couldn't tell you a single painting that was on the wall. that's embarrassing to type out haha.
the thing I'm wrestling with is that I'm 8 months into doing this full time and there's rent, so "come look at art for a year and let them learn your face" feels like a huge luxury when I've got a spreadsheet open at 1am. but I think you're right that the desperation is the whole problem. do you actually go back to the same three or four spaces over and over, or do you spread it around?
ok the openings thing is the part I keep hearing and keep ignoring because it's the slow answer haha. but "the submission email is for after they already know your face" actually reframes the whole thing for me? like I've been treating the email as the ask when it's really just the follow-up to something that hasn't happened yet. that's a much less vomit-in-the-car way of thinking about it.
question though, since you've clearly done this: how do you go three or four times without feeling like a weirdo standing in the corner? do you actually talk to the owner at some point or just become a familiar face and let them come to you? because I am fully capable of attending six openings in silence and never saying a word to anyone, that's basically my superpower.