Instagram sent me a young collector who found my quilt through a hashtag I'd never even heard of
So my granddaughter set up my Instagram a few years back, and I just post what I'm working on. I don't know all the tricks, I just put the quilt up there with whatever I feel like saying about it.
And this young lady from California, she's a curator at some museum, I had to look it up, messages me and says she found my work through a hashtag I didn't even put on there. #improvisationalpiecing, something somebody else tagged me with. She said she'd been looking for quilters working "in the Gee's Bend lineage" and couldn't find nobody who wasn't already famous and priced out of reach.
I sold her a quilt for $800. She found it through a tag I didn't even know existed.
I got regular customers, Lord bless 'em, the ones who buy baby quilts and lap quilts for their mama. That's steady money. But the people who find me through these art-world tags, they're a different kind of buyer entirely. They want the story. They want the history. They don't blink at the price.
Makes me think I'm posting for the wrong audience half the time. But I don't have the energy to chase two worlds at once. Y'all got any advice on that?
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This is so lovely. Something about the way you describe it, just putting the work up with whatever you feel like saying, that's actually exactly how it should work, isn't it? The algorithms and hashtag games, they can make it feel like you need a strategy, but here the right person found you through something someone else tagged, not even something you did yourself.
And the Gee's Bend connection, what a compliment, honestly. That lineage is something else. I paint old Bangalore houses and a lot of them are gone now, and sometimes someone finds a sketch years later through some random tag and tells me their grandfather lived in that house. It's that same feeling of the work reaching the person it was meant for, by some roundabout route.
Glad she bought it and your grandson can visit. That's the kind of Instagram story that keeps you posting. 🙂
That's exactly it, honey. I just put the quilt up and say what's on my heart about it. Never did figure out all them hashtag games my granddaughter tries to teach me. The Lord just sent the right person along anyway.
And listen, you painting those old Bangalore houses, that touched me. Something about catching a thing before it's gone, making sure somebody remembers it looked that way. That's what Gee's Bend taught me too. These old quilts, they're records. Not just fabric, but who we were, what we had, what we made do with. Sounds like you're doing the same with them houses.
Keep on. Somebody's gonna find your work the same way that young curator found mine, and it'll mean all the more because it wasn't forced.
That's a beautiful thing you do, painting those old houses. My grandmother used to say a house remembers everything that happened in it, even after it's gone. Sounds like you're doing the same kind of work I'm doing, just with a brush instead of a needle. Holding onto what the world's letting slip away.
And you're right about the strategy part. All these young folks telling me I need a content plan, a posting schedule. I got a plan alright, finish the quilt, put it up, pray the right eyes find it. That's been working sixty-some years now.