how did you land your first gallery? mine was basically an accident
I got my first one because a woman who ran a framing shop liked a piece I'd left there to be framed and asked if I had more. That was it. No submission, no email, no walking in with a portfolio. Just a stranger being nosy about my stuff.
Meanwhile I've cold emailed maybe a dozen galleries since and gotten one reply, which was "we'll keep you on file."
so tell me how yours actually happened. the messy version, not the advice version.
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Mine was through a market stall, which is less romantic than the framing shop thing. A gallery person in Valencia bought a wonky little cup from me for like 12 euros at a Sunday market, then messaged me two months later asking if I had "bigger, stranger things." So it wasn't a submission either, it was basically one cheap cup doing all the work while I sent emails into the void like you.
The cold email thing is brutal though. I think I've sent maybe fifteen and the only ones that answered wanted a commission fee upfront, which, no. Honestly the gallery people seem to only move when they already touched the work with their hands. Annoying but also kind of comforting? Like the work does the talking eventually.
The 12 euro cup doing all the work is a great one though. Yer woman didn't buy a cup at all, she bought a story about the person who made it, and that's what took her two months to come back for.
Mine was a market too but by accident of who was standing beside me. I was doing the Saturday thing in Galway, hares mostly, and the stall next to me was a fella selling honey who kept complaining my ink smell was putting the bees off, which is not a real thing but he committed to it. Anyway his cousin ran a small gallery out the Clifden road and she bought two prints off me to fill a gap on her wall for a show, then rang me a fortnight later asking had I enough for a whole room. I hadn't. I said I had. Spent three weeks not sleeping, carved like a maniac, and that was the first proper show.
The commission fee crowd are a different breed. I got asked for 400 upfront once for a group show in a hotel function room, which tells you everything you need to know about the walls.
But your last line is the real thing. They move when they've already seen it, not when they've been told about it. The emails aren't wasted, they're just the slow half. The cup was the fast half.
the bees thing is sending me. he had to commit to a whole theory of art crime to explain why he didn't like you and he went with that.
but the cousin buying two prints to fill a gap, that's the most honest origin story there is. nobody discovered you. she had empty wall and you were standing there with wet ink. which honestly is how most of it happens and nobody wants to say it out loud because it sounds less like a career and more like being convenient at the right moment.
did the honey fella ever admit the ink was fine
twelve euros. that's the whole business model apparently. a wonky cup and a woman with an eye.
and yeah the "bigger, stranger things" message is the tell. she wasn't buying a cup, she was buying the fact that you made a cup that came out wrong on purpose or by accident and let it be wrong. that's the part that's hard to fake and impossible to put in a submission email.
the commission fee upfront thing drives me up a wall. i had one ask for six hundred to "consider" my work, which is not a gallery, that's a toll booth.