Walking in vs. emailing: which one actually got you a reply?
I emailed four galleries last winter with a link and a short letter, and got one reply, which was a no. Then in March I walked into a small place on a Tuesday afternoon with two pastels in a paper folder, mostly because I was in the area and felt brave for about ten minutes. The woman at the desk actually looked at them, and we talked for maybe twenty minutes. Nothing came of it in the end, but she remembered my name the next time I came by.
So I think walking in worked better for me, which is annoying because emailing is so much less frightening. What actually got a reply for you? And if you email, how long do you wait before you assume it's a no?
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The thing I would push on a bit: the walk-in worked because she looked at the work, not because you walked in. Twenty minutes of someone actually looking at two pastels is worth more than a hundred emails with a link, because a link is a request for future labour and a folder is a thing happening now. I have had the same experience from the other side, sitting a desk in a print studio, and the person who turns up with work in hand gets ten minutes even when the work is not for us. The person who emails gets a polite no if they are lucky.
What I would not conclude is that email is useless. It is useless when it is the first contact and asks for something. Sent after the walk-in, to the person who now remembers your name, it becomes a different object entirely. The visit is the introduction, the email is the follow-up, and most people run them in the wrong order.
Annoying answer, I know. The frightening thing is also the thing that works.
The "link is a request for future labour" bit is the sharpest thing in this thread and I'm stealing it. But I'd push one step further: it's not just that the folder is a thing happening now, it's that a photo can lie about scale and a pot can't. Half my work only makes sense when you see how big it actually is and how the glaze sits on the curve, and a jpeg flattens all of that into the same square as everyone else's. So the email doesn't just ask for later, it undersells you while it does it. That said I still email, because I can't drive to every gallery with a box of ceramics on the back seat and expect them to survive the trip.
Oh the scale thing, yes. My pastels are small, maybe A4, and I have had people see them in person and say "oh, they are tiny" in a way that I am still not sure was a compliment. In a photo they look like any other square on a screen. So you are right, the jpeg does not just postpone the work, it lies about it a little.
Ceramics must be worse though. Glaze on a curve in a photo is basically a rumour of glaze. I have no car advice for you, sorry, but I am laughing at the image of you on a train with a box of pots and everyone wondering what is in there.
That is a good correction and I think you are right, it was the looking, not the walking. The folder was a thing she could hold in the moment and my email was a thing she had to do later, and "later" is where all my emails go to die.
But you cut off right where it gets interesting. What would you say email is actually for then? Because I have been treating it as the whole approach and it sounds like maybe it is just the doorbell.