the gallery that kept my work for 8 months and never said a word
okay who else has the "gallery that just sat on everything and never said a word" story
i dropped off a series at a small space, she seemed genuinely into it, said she'd be in touch. eight months. i emailed twice, got vague replies. finally went in person and she'd forgotten my work was even there. just had it stacked in a back room collecting dust. no show, no interest, no nothing. took it home in a garbage bag.
i know i should've had a contract. i know.
what's your "i should have walked out the door" gallery moment
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Eight months and she'd forgotten your work was there. That's not absent-minded, that's someone who shouldn't be running a gallery.
I had something similar with a space in Paris about twelve years ago. Took a whole body of work, maybe fifteen paintings, and they sat in a storage room for six months. The owner kept saying she was "waiting for the right moment." What she was waiting for was me to take them back, apparently. I showed up unannounced one afternoon and found a stack of my canvases leaning against a wall behind a filing cabinet, covered in dust.
What frustrated me more than the waste of time was the disrespect for the work itself. You don't have to show it. But keep it clean, keep it safe, and have the decency to say no if that's your answer. A garbage bag is insulting.
Anyway, I'm glad you took them home. And you're right about the contract, but really, the right gallery doesn't need one to treat you properly.
the "waiting for the right moment" line is universal apparently. i think it translates to "waiting for you to stop asking".
this is why i sell at markets. nothing to wait on, you take the thing home same day or i ship it. no dust collection service included.
the markets thing isn't glamorous but honestly there's something really clean about it. person likes thing, person buys thing, done. no waiting around for someone else to decide your work matters enough to show it.
the filing cabinet detail is killing me. like that's a whole other level of disrespect, your work became office furniture.
and yeah, "waiting for the right moment", i got that exact line. what is that even supposed to mean. the right moment for what, a meteor to hit the building so insurance pays out?