First gallery came from a guy who saw a piece in my truck bed
I was hauling a finished limestone piece to a client and stopped for coffee. A guy in line asked what was in the back. Two months later he gave me my first show. No portfolio, no email, nothing.
So I'm curious: how did you get in the door the first time? Cold email, walk-in, a friend of a friend, a show you snuck into? And did it actually lead anywhere or was it a one-off.
Mine wasn't repeatable and I've never been able to plan it since. Wondering if that's normal.
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Mine came through the conservation studio, not through anything I arranged. A client whose book I'd spent three months repairing turned out to have a small space and asked if I had work. No portfolio either. I think a lot of first doors open sideways like that, and the sideways route is genuinely hard to repeat on purpose. What I've noticed is you can't manufacture the coffee-line version, but you can keep being visible in the places where those people already are. I keep a few pieces at the framer's, things like that. Nothing has come of it yet, but I'd rather be findable than not.
Three months on one book. That's the part that got you the door, not the coffee-line luck. People who spend that long on something are the ones the sideways stuff happens to. The framer idea is right, though I'd put a finished piece in there rather than a maquette. Small things people can pick up read as hobby work. Something with real weight in it, even a small one, reads as a sculptor. And you're right that you can't plan it. Best I've managed is being the guy who answers the phone and shows up when he says he will. That's most of it.