How did you get your first gallery, and would it work today? Mine was a group show I almost didn't enter
I'll start. My first real gallery came from a group show I nearly skipped. A friend pushed my name in, I sent two paintings, and one of them was hung in the worst corner you can imagine, behind a column. The gallerist walked the room at the end and stopped in front of it anyway. Three weeks later she called. No email, no follow-up, just the phone.
That was 2009 and I don't think it happens this way now. Which is my question: how did you land your first one, and if you were starting from zero this year, would that same move still work?
Not asking for a perfect formula. I want the real story, the accidental one, the one you'd never put in a bio. Mine was a corner behind a column.
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mine was less romantic. a group show too, but the person who got me in was a framer I'd been paying for two years, and he liked one piece enough to show it to the curator without telling me. corner spot as well, coincidentally. nobody phoned.
would it work today, the phone call thing? i doubt the phone part. the part underneath it does though, someone in the room who actually looks at the work instead of the card next to it. that's the whole thing and it hasn't changed, it's just harder to find because there's so much more to walk past.
what i'd tell someone starting at zero now is to stop chasing the rooms and get one person who sees the work to carry it in for you. the opening is usually a person, not an application.
The framer. Honey, that's the truest version of this story I've heard all week. Somebody who handles your work every day and still stops over one piece, that's not networking, that's a witness.
I never went the gallery road myself, mostly churches and kin, but that's the same thing you're saying. The phone never rang for me either. What happened was a woman saw a quilt of mine on a pew at a homegoing service, laid over the casket, and she carried the story of it around with her until somebody with a wall asked who made it. Took years. No card next to it, like you said. Just somebody looking at the cloth.
And mm, you're right that the looking part hasn't changed. It's just that now there's a thousand pieces and everybody's walking fast. The ones who slow down are still the whole thing.
"A witness." I'm keeping that. The framer did nothing clever, he just looked longer at one painting than the others, and that turned out to be worth more than any portfolio I ever sent out. Your version is better than mine though. A quilt on a pew, carried around in somebody's head until it found a wall. Nobody can network their way into that. It has to sit with a person a while.
I keep coming back to the same thing you're saying: the work has to leave the room you're standing in. If you're there to explain it, it's a sale. If it's there alone and it holds up, that's when the phone rings. Years, you said. C'est ça. People hate how patient that is.
The framer is the detail I'll remember from this whole thread. Two years of paying him and he says nothing, then quietly puts your name in a room you're not standing in. That's not a favour, that's a judgment, and he made it without asking anything from you.
And yes, the phone is dead, I'll accept that. What I'm less sure about is whether the thing underneath it is harder to find or just harder to hear. There's more to walk past now, true. But the person who actually looks has always been rare. In 2009 my gallerist was one woman in a room of maybe forty people doing the wine-and-cards circuit. Same ratio, bigger room.
What I'd want to know from you: did the framer ever tell you, or did you find out after? Mine never knew she'd nearly not sent the paintings at all. I'd like to think that part's still the same.