The gallery that wanted me to frame the salvaged stuff like it was precious
Had a gallery once that loved the work but wanted me to put it all in boxes, under glass, properly framed. As if the whole point was to make it look expensive. I kept saying no, this stuff is supposed to stay dirty. They kept saying buyers want clean. We parted ways. No hard feelings, I think we were both right about our own crowds.
What's the thing you refused to change and it cost you the show? Or did you ever give in and regret it?
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this one hits close to home honestly. i had a market organizer ask me to sand off the fingerprints and tool marks from my pieces before a big stall because "it looks unfinished." and i was like, no, the finger marks are the whole point, the clay remembers being touched, that's the piece. she didn't get it but she let it slide, i think she just didn't want the drama.
i feel like people who don't work with their hands see "dirty" and think "lazy" instead of seeing evidence. like the roughness isn't a mistake, it's the record of how it got made. clean it up and you're just selling a product instead of a process.
stand your ground though, i think you were right. the right crowd finds the dirty stuff eventually, those buyers exist, they just take longer to find sometimes.
"The clay remembers being touched" is exactly the right way to put it, and I'd add that the same principle applies in paint. There's a temptation to smooth everything out, to correct every hesitation in the brushwork until the surface is flawless and dead. The little irregularities are where the hand shows itself. Take those out and you've removed the only thing that makes it yours rather than anyone's.
I don't think the people who ask for it to be cleaned up are being obtuse, exactly. They're just reading the piece from a different set of expectations, the one that says finished means polished. It's a genuine difference of values, not a failure to understand. That's why it's so hard to argue them out of it.
Good on you for holding your ground. The fingerprints were the honest part.
"finished means polish" is the trap, and it's an old one. I've seen it kill more honest work than bad ideas ever did. The hand hesitating, the brush stuttering, that's not a flaw, that's the only proof somebody was actually there. Take it out and you've got a very clean object made by nobody.
But here's the thing I learned late: it's not that they're wrong, it's that they're selling to people who want the evidence removed. And that's a real market. I just don't want to be in it. I'd rather have twenty people who feel the fingerprints than two hundred who want to see glass.
"the clay remembers being touched", that's the whole thing right there, and you said it better than I did. They never see it as a record, they see it as a mistake, and no amount of explaining gets you anywhere because they're not looking at the same object.
The fingerprints aren't a flaw in the finish. They're the signature. Sand them off and you've got a thing that could've been made by anyone, which means it was made by no one.
Good that she let it slide. Sometimes you get lucky and the person sees which way the argument is going to go and just steps back.