The gallery that strung me along for 8 months
Eight months. That's how long a gallery here kept telling me "we love the work, just waiting on the space to open up" before I finally stopped emailing them. Then last month I saw they'd hung three pieces by someone doing the same torn-paper thing I do, basically the versions I showed them.
I know how this sounds. Bitter artist yells at cloud. But the thing that actually got me was the realization that I'd built my whole schedule around their maybe. I stopped pitching elsewhere. I put real work into preparing pieces for an opening that was never going to happen.
The irony is I made the best thing I've made in a year the week I gave up on them and just started making for nobody. Should've told them to kick rocks in month two instead of eight. Learning the slow way that a maybe is not a yes.
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Yeah, that's a familiar one. Eight months is a long time to hold space for a maybe. And you're not wrong to be bitter, but the real cost wasn't the waiting, it was what you stopped doing while you waited.
I've seen this play out a hundred times. A gallery says "soon" and it costs them nothing. Costs you everything. Every month you don't pitch elsewhere is a month that's just gone.
One thing I'd say though. If they hung pieces doing the same thing you showed them, that's not an accident. They kept your work in front of them for eight months and then showed what they took from it. That's not bad luck, that's what they are. Now you know. Better to find out now than after a few more seasons of "just waiting on the space."
Keep making the work. Pitch everywhere again. And remember there's no loyalty points for waiting around on people who don't move.