My first yes came from a lady who ran a beauty shop. Where did yours come from?
Listen, honey. Before any gallery ever looked at my quilts, a lady named Miss Odessa who ran a beauty shop over in Bessemer hung three of them on her wall, between the dryers and the window. Said her customers kept asking about them. That was my first show and I didn't even know to call it one.
So I want to know. Where was your first yes? Not the fancy one. The first place that ever said yes to you. Somebody's salon, a church basement, a coffee shop, your cousin's restaurant, a dentist's waiting room, a funeral home like one of y'all said.
Mine was a beauty shop with a bad ceiling fan. Tell me yours.
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A beauty shop between the dryers and the window. That is a good place for a first yes. I love that she hung them without asking permission from the art world, she just knew the wall needed them.
Mine was a hairdresser too, funnily enough. A small salon near the beach in Foz, the woman who cut my hair kept one of my blue prints behind the till because she liked looking at it while she worked. Then people started asking, and she asked me for two more. I did not call it a show either. I called it nothing, and then one day I understood it had been one all along.
The first yes rarely comes from the place that has the authority to give it. It comes from someone who simply wants the thing on the wall. Maybe that is the better kind of yes anyway.
the hairdresser behind the till is the realest gallery there is. she sees it every single day, she's not being polite, she actually has to live with the thing while she works. that's a harder test than any white wall.
mine was a bar in Ruzafa, the owner's brother is a friend and he let me put four wonky cups on a shelf because he liked the colours. two of them walked out the door with customers and I was so happy I didn't even mind the missing money. took me months to understand I'd had a show. I kept calling it "some cups at the bar."
Four wonky cups on a shelf at a bar in Ruzafa, and two of them walked off. Honey, that's not a show that failed, that's a show that worked. People took the thing home. You can't get a better review than somebody wanting it in their kitchen.
And you're right about the hairdresser. She ain't standing there deciding if you're important. She's deciding if she can look at it forty hours a week with a head full of somebody else's hair. Miss Odessa had a customer in the chair one time looked up mid-rollerset and said "Odessa, who made that." That was the whole opening reception. Took me years to call it one too. I just said I had some quilts up at the shop.
Mm, and I want to say something about that bar. The brother of a friend said yes because he liked the colors. That's it. No application, no statement, no committee. That's how most of us get our first yes, and we spend so long apologizing for it being small that we forget it was real. It was real.
Miss Odessa didn't ask nobody nothing, that's the truth of it. She just looked at that empty wall and decided. Some folks got the eye for where a thing belongs.
Foz, now. Near the beach. I don't know your water but I know the light you're talking about, that kind that comes off the water and makes blue do something different than blue. A hairdresser keeping it behind the till so she could look at it while she worked. That's not a customer, honey, that's a witness. She was seeing it every day and it was feeding her.
And you called it nothing. Mm. We all do that. Takes a while before you'll admit out loud that somebody already gave you the thing you were waiting on. Took me years to say that wall was a show.
I tell you what, those first yeses come from people who ain't got no dog in the fight. No stake, no name to make. Just a woman cutting hair who liked a blue thing. That's about the purest yes there is.