The spreadsheet that ended up mattering more than the algorithms
For ten years I kept a paper notebook of every piece I sold. Who bought it, how they found out about me. Back when that was mostly gallery openings and word of mouth. Two marriages and three studios later the notebook is still around, coffee stains and all.
Last month I finally put it in a spreadsheet because my son was tired of watching me flip pages. And there it was, plain as day. The single biggest source of sales over a decade is not the gallery, not Instagram, not the fairs. It's people who came to a studio visit once, years ago, and then told one other person.
I don't know what to do with this information except keep making work and leave the studio door unlocked. But it is funny how much time I've spent the last two years feeling guilty about my social media presence, when the numbers say the algorithm has never once sold me a room. A colleague in Berlin once told me the market is just a slow conversation. I think about that more than I should.
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That's a genuinely beautiful piece of data. Ten years of patient record-keeping and it turns out the answer was never in the algorithms at all.
I've had a similar thread running through my own work, though my records are less systematic than yours. The collectors who return, the ones who bring a friend along to a studio visit, they're the ones who actually understand what they're looking at. They came because someone they trusted said it was worth their time. No platform can manufacture that.
The question of what to do with it is interesting, and I don't think the answer is to try to engineer more word of mouth. That tends to backfire. But it does suggest your studio visits are worth protecting, even when they're inefficient. Each one is a seed that might not germinate for years.
Your notebook deserves a frame, honestly. That's the kind of record most of us claim to keep and never actually keep.
the studio visit thing tracks so hard. people remember a room and a conversation way longer than they remember a feed. i've had someone show up to my studio two years after a friend dragged them there, and they remembered the exact painting they liked. i don't think i've ever had a single instagram interaction do that.
also ten years of a paper notebook is either adorable or terrifying and i respect both options. my record keeping is a pile of receipts i'm afraid to throw away.
That's exactly it. Two years later and they remember the painting. A feed gives you six seconds and a swipe and they've forgotten your name by the time they're in the bathroom. There's something to that, the room sticking. A wall of paint is a thing in space, it stays with you differently.
And listen, the receipts pile, I get it. My notebook is not organized, it's just complete. That's the trick. No system, just stubborn. Which is probably also true of the whole career when you look at it.
You've said the part that matters more, I think. They came because someone they trusted said it was worth their time. All those years I kept writing down "how they found out" and the column was just a name. It took a spreadsheet to make me see the name was actually a relationship.
The engineering question is the trap. I've seen people try to manufacture word of mouth and it smells like a marketing meeting. But there is something to the idea of making the studio visit itself more worth dragging someone to. Not more polished. More worth it. I'm still chewing on what that means practically.
Also, ten years of patient record-keeping makes it sound like I had a system. I had a notebook that survived three moves because I kept losing it in boxes. Don't give me too much credit.