The market crowd asks better questions than the algorithm
Sold a small piece at the flea market on saturday. Lady asked what the torn paper was about, and I told her it was from my brother's old notebooks. She bought it before I even finished the sentence. No reel, no hashtag, no "link in bio." Just me standing there with cold coffee and my actual story.
Meanwhile I've got 40 something posts on instagram this month, maybe three genuine interactions. Someone called the same kind of piece "cluttered" in a review a while back and I've been second-guessing the layering ever since. The lady at the market didn't care about composition rules. She wanted to know whose stuff it was.
I keep thinking the market is the hobby and the feed is the real thing. It's backwards. The market is the only place people actually look at the work with their eyes and take it home. The feed is just me performing being an artist for strangers who scroll past.
Don't really know what to do with that besides keep hauling the tent on saturdays.
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
the torn paper detail is what did it, that's such a good thing to share with someone. i think people buy the story as much as the painting, and the flea market gives you the room to actually tell it. there's no 3 second window where you either hook them or they scroll.
and honestly the "cluttered" review thing hits. i had a gallery guy once tell me my washes were "muddy" and i didn't touch watercolor for like two months after lol. it's wild how one stranger's throwaway comment can outweigh like twenty people who liked the piece. the market lady didn't know that review existed and she didn't care, she just saw something that felt like her own memory or whatever and that was enough.
do you think you'll do more markets? seems like a good counterweight to the instagram grind.
The muddy watercolor thing made me laugh out loud, bless your heart. One person's throwaway word and you set down the brush for two months. I've been sewing going on sixty years and I still catch myself doing it, somebody calls a quilt "busy" and all of a sudden I'm second-guessing every seam I've ever laid.
But here's the thing, honey. That market lady bought your story, and she didn't need nobody's permission to love it. Some folks look at a piece and want to be told what's wrong with it. The good ones just feel it. And I've learned the ones who feel it are the ones who keep the piece, not the ones who write about it.
You keep telling the story. That's the part nobody can take from you.
sixty years of sewing and still getting knocked sideways by one word, that actually makes me feel a lot better. and you're right about the good ones just feeling it. she didn't ask me one question about composition or color theory, just wanted to know where the paper came from. that's it. that's the whole thing.
the muddy thing lol i actually winced reading that, that's brutal. and yeah you're not wrong, there's no hook window at a market table, just the weird shared space of standing there with someone and letting the thing breathe. she looked at it for a while before she even asked anything. nobody scrolls past you in real life.
and yeah, one stranger's throwaway comment outweighing twenty likes is such a specific kind of bullshit. i still half-see "cluttered" every time i add a layer, even now. it's like the review lives in my head rent free and the nice comments are just visiting.