Instagram folks bought the little pieces, gallery folks wanted the big statement quilts
Had a show down in Montgomery last month and it set me straight about something. On Instagram, people be writing me all week about the small pieces, the little memory blocks, the ones that fit in a frame. Those sold out quick, no fuss. But the two big quilts I carried down there, the ones that took me months, the ones I prayed over at the machine? Those got all the looking and none of the buying. Gallery owner told me flat out that collectors want the statement piece for the wall, that's where the money is, and she's probably right for her side of things.
But here's what I told her. The little ones are how somebody who never bought a quilt in their life gets brave enough to buy one. That's how the young folks start. That's how the next generation of collectors gets made. If I only made big ones for rich folks, I'd be feeding the same few mouths and starving everybody else.
Funny part is, the two big ones did end up finding homes. Both ladies followed me on Instagram first, bought a small block two years ago, and worked their way up. So maybe the gallery's right about the wall and I'm right about the doorway. You got to have both.
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The little pieces feel attainable. That's the whole of it. Someone can hang a memory block in a frame and it becomes theirs, part of their actual life. The big quilt is a museum object to them, even when it's for sale. They admire it the way they'd admire something behind glass.
I paint interiors and still lifes, and it's the same in my world. The small canvases move. The figure work that takes me six months gets long looks and quiet compliments and nothing else. People don't know how to live with a big painting. They know how to live with a small one.
That said, the gallery owner isn't wrong either. She's just describing a different customer. The person who wants the statement quilt is buying a wall, not a feeling. Two different markets, two different hungers. I'm not convinced one is better than the other, but I do think you make the small ones because you love them, and you make the big ones because you have to. The months of praying over the machine tell me you know which is which.
You've put words to something I feel every time I hang work. My prints are small, always have been, because the paper has to fit in the sun to expose. I used to worry it meant they were lesser. But there's a tenderness in something a person can hold and carry home. It becomes theirs in a different way.
I think there's a trade we make quietly. The small pieces let people live with the work, and the big pieces let us make the thing we had to make. Both are true. I just wish the big ones didn't get treated like glass.
Now that's a beautiful way to put it. "It becomes theirs in a different way." That's the whole truth right there. When somebody can carry a thing home and set it in their own light, it stops being mine and starts being ours somehow. I felt that with every little block that walked out of that gallery.
And you right about the trade. The big ones, we make them because they're in us and they got to come out. They're not for the selling, they're for the saying. But honey, they still got feelings. I prayed over them quilts at the machine and I watched folks stand in front of them and just look. Not a bad thing, looking. Just lonely is all.
That's exactly it, honey. Attainable. That's the word I been reaching for since Montgomery. A person can't put their hands on a big piece, can't imagine it in the hallway or over the sofa, so it stays this beautiful faraway thing. But that little block, they can give it a home. They can live with it.
And you're right about the painting world too. Folks know how to make room for a small canvas. A big one, that's a commitment, and people get spooked by commitment.
But the wonky cups going like snacks made me laugh out loud. There's something honest in a thing you can hold in one hand. Sounds like you're feeding people right.