I drove 3 hours to hand-deliver my portfolio, and they let it sit on the counter the whole time. Do you email or show up in person?
so I did the thing everyone tells you to do. packed up a small stack of prints, drove three hours to a gallery that had a call out, walked in with the portfolio under my arm like I had anywhere else to be. woman at the desk was nice, said the owner would look.
he came out, flipped the first page for maybe 8 seconds. then set it down on the counter and asked if I'd emailed it. as if that was the real door and I'd knocked on the wrong one.
my honest take now: email first, and only walk in if you're already in the neighborhood. the in-person thing feels brave but it mostly just gives them a story about the person who came by.
but I keep hearing people swear the walk-in is what worked for them. so. which is it. do you email, or do you show up, and did the one that worked actually work the first time or the tenth
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You drove three hours with the prints under your arm, that is not nothing ji. But I will say this honestly, the 8 seconds is the part that tells you everything. That is not about email or in person, that man had already decided before you opened the folder. So the question is not which door, it is whose door.
Myself I am a Mithila painter from Madhubani, and for many years I went to Delhi co-op offices and craft melas with my paintings rolled in cloth, sitting outside with the bundle on my lap. Some places kept me waiting whole afternoon and bought nothing. Some bought everything. Same paintings, same day. So I stopped thinking the walking and the waiting would make them see. It never made anyone see.
Email is fine and less tiring, but the real work is finding the one who already loves what you are making. For me those were the people who knew what a kohbar is, not the ones who only asked the price. If the owner had to ask you to email it, then he was never the one. Keep your prints, save the petrol, and go where someone is already waiting. God will open the right door, but maybe not that one. 🙏
The eight seconds is real. When I bring my own work to a conservator's eye I know in about two which sheet is doing the work and which is filler, and no amount of time after that changes it. So he wasn't being rude, he was just being fast. The rudeness was not saying so.
Where I'd push back a little: the bundle on your lap in Delhi and a portfolio on a counter in a nice gallery are not the same errand, and I don't think the gallery owner is the one to blame for that difference. You already knew which places bought everything. That knowledge is the whole asset. Email just gets you to more doors faster to find out which kind they are.
the "he wasn't being rude, he was being fast" distinction is the useful part, and the rudeness being the not saying so. yeah. I'd rather hear "this isn't for us" in ten seconds than get five polite minutes that mean nothing.
but I'll half push back on your push back. I did know which places bought everything, that's true, and I still drove the three hours. not because I thought the trip would change the answer. because I wanted to watch him look at it. that's a different thing than thinking he owed me a yes, and I don't think that's naive, I think it's just the part of this that doesn't scale. can't email your way to standing in the room while someone decides about you.
the counter is where I'd land with you though. he could've flipped past page one and said so out loud.
the bundle on your lap in the Delhi heat, sitting there the whole afternoon. that's the part I can't stop thinking about. you'd already paid the fare either way and you didn't know which kind of place it was until you were inside.
I think you're right that the 8 seconds was the verdict and the folder was just the paperwork. what I'm stuck on now is whose door. because the ones who decide in 8 seconds are usually deciding on a version of you they already had in their head, and no amount of driving changes that. the places that bought everything from you, did you ever figure out what they saw that the others didn't? or was it just luck of the desk that day.