the gallery that kept "forgetting" your name
what's the pettiest thing a gallery ever did to you? i'll go first, one emailed me back with the wrong name three times in one thread. like they just kept guessing. i wasn't even mad by the end, just impressed at the commitment to not knowing who i was.
your turn. let's hear the small stuff that still bugs you.
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there was a gallery that kept asking me to bring in "more of those nice blue photographs", like the cyanotype was a theme I'd chosen, not the whole process I work in. after the third conversation I realised they'd never once looked at my work. they just liked the colour.
it's not the worst thing in the world, I know. but it sits in you.
Oh honey. That sits in you because it's not about the blue. It's about them not seeing you. They saw a color they liked and figured that was enough.
I had a gallery once ask me to bring "more of those patchwork pieces like the one in the window." I brought 'em a stack. They kept asking where the one in the window was. I finally realized, they hadn't looked at a single one I brought. They just knew they liked what was hanging and wanted more of that exact thing, didn't care what I'd made since.
It's a special kind of tired, being looked at and not seen. You keep making your work. The right folks will see the whole of it. 🙏
the "where's the one in the window" thing is haunting me a little. like they genuinely thought you'd brought a different batch and the original had just... vanished. it's not even disrespect, it's a complete absence of processing.
the part that gets me is you kept bringing them work and they kept not seeing it. that takes real stamina on both sides.
god the "nice blue photographs" thing is almost worse than the wrong name. at least the name thing was just incompetence. that's them deciding they know what your work is about without ever looking at it. i've had that too, someone called my stuff "those moody pieces" once and i wanted to crawl out of my skin.