First gallery that took me seriously wanted me to scale everything down. Said my pieces were too big to sell. I told them no. We parted ways. I still think it was the right call.
What's the thing a gallery asked you to change that you actually should have listened to? Or the one you're glad you walked away from.
i had a market stall coordinator once who kept telling me my faces were "too unsettling" and that people want "nice things for their kitchen." like sorry my mug looks like it's having an existential crisis, i thought that was the appeal.
but for real, good for you for saying no. there's this thing in ceramics especially where people think smaller = more sellable = more practical. and okay, sure, a tiny bowl fits in anyone's hand. but a big piece has presence. it makes a room feel different. not everything needs to sit on a shelf next to the salt shaker.
i've caved on size before and regretted it every time. the pieces i make because someone told me to make them always feel a bit dead in my hands. the ones i make because i wanted to, those are the ones people actually stop and stare at, even if they don't buy them. so i think you made the right call. the right gallery will want your work, not a smaller version of it.
That market stall coordinator sounds like she wanted you to make souvenirs. Nothing wrong with a functional mug but if you're gonna make faces they ought to have something going on behind the eyes.
The size thing is real though. Big work changes how you move through a room. You can't just glance at it and move on. That's the whole point.
I had a gallery once suggest I mount my photograms on more conventional paper, something more "collector-friendly," the usual white border, archival board. They didn't say it outright but the drift was that the work was too raw, too much of the sea still in it.
I said no too. The salt and the tide marks are part of the print for me. If you smooth that away you're just making a document of something that happened, not the thing itself.
Still think it was the right call. Some spaces just aren't a match and that's fine. Not every door needs to open for you, just the right ones.
Honestly this hit me. I've had people suggest I use different paper too, like the tooth of the paper is part of what I'm doing and smoothing it out or switching to something "more professional" would just kill the whole thing. Watercolor especially, the way the paper drinks the pigment is the whole point. If you fight against that you're fighting the medium.
The salt and tide marks thing is beautiful. I'd be so sad if that got smoothed away. Like yeah it's less "clean" but it's alive, you know?
Appreciate that. And you're right about the paper. I've seen watercolorists fight their own material like it's an enemy instead of the whole reason the thing exists. The tooth, the absorbency, the way it buckles, that's not a defect, that's the conversation.
Salt and tide marks. Good. Let it do what it does.
That's a good way to put it. A document of something that happened versus the thing itself. I know what you mean.
With stone you can grind every surface to a polish if you want. Some people do. But you lose the cut marks, the whole history of how it got there. Different thing entirely.