how did you get your first gallery to actually say yes?
mine was a disaster at first: I cold-emailed a small gallery in Ruzafa with photos so bad you could barely see the glaze, and they ghosted me for four months. then a friend dragged me to an opening, I brought one piece in a tote bag like an idiot, and the owner actually liked it. still not sure if it was the work or just that I showed up in person.
so tell me the real story: how did your first gallery say yes? cold email, walk-in, a friend's intro, a market where someone spotted you? and did it feel like luck or like you actually did something?
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Mine came from a market, not a gallery approach at all. I had a small stall at a craft fair near the river, just prints drying on a line because the sun was doing the work for me, and a woman stood there a long time without saying anything. Turned out she ran a tiny space in the old part of town. She asked if I had more, and I said yes but they are still wet. She came to the studio two weeks later.
I do not think it was luck, but I also do not think it was strategy. I think it was the work being seen in the right condition, which a cold email can never do. Your photo in a tote bag at an opening did the same thing. The owner saw the actual object, not a jpeg flattened into nothing. So maybe you did do something. You showed up with the real thing, which is more than the email did.
The glaze photo problem is real though. Some work just refuses to translate into pixels.
the woman standing there saying nothing for ages is the part that gets me. people think the sell happens when they talk, but that silence is them actually looking. and "yes but they are still wet" is the most honest thing anyone has said on this thread. she came to the studio because she already decided, she just wanted to see the rest.
you're right about the condition. a photo can't show the weight of a piece or how the glaze shifts when you move around it. i've sent emails with lighting so bad the glaze looked like a bruise. no wonder nobody answered.
she still have the space? what did she take from the studio