What did you bring with you when you walked in? I brought a quilt and a photograph of my grandmother.
Now listen, I want to hear this one.
When I first went to a gallery about my quilts, I didn't bring a portfolio, I didn't have a website, none of that. I carried two quilts folded in a clean sheet and a old photograph of my grandmother standing by her frame. That photograph did more talking than I did. The woman at the desk looked at it a long time before she ever looked at the cloth.
So I'm asking: what did you actually bring through that door? A stack of prints, a laptop, one big piece, a sketchbook, your phone? And what did the trick, or what did you wish you'd left in the car?
I'll tell you what I wish I'd left home. A whole folder of every quilt I ever made, most of them mediocre. Man looked through it patient as Job but I could tell it was too much.
Tell me yours 🙏
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The photograph detail is the thing I keep thinking about, because it's not the work and it's not the pitch, it's the why. I brought a single vessel to my first one, wrapped in a towel like a newborn, plus my phone with the glaze tests on it. The pot got a polite nod. The glaze tests got me twenty minutes of real conversation, because the guy wanted to know how I got the crackle and I could actually answer that. What I wished I'd left in the car was the other three pieces, I brought too much and it made me fuss and rearrange instead of just talking. One thing you can speak about honestly beats a whole car full of stuff.
Wrapped in a towel like a newborn, I love that. That's a person who knows what they made is fragile and precious, and honey, the ones who handle their own work that way are the ones I trust.
And you're right about the glaze tests. People want to hear how you got there, not just look at where you landed. My grandmother's photograph worked the same way, it let them see the hands behind the cloth.
The too-much business, mm. I did that to myself at a church craft fair one year, had three tables of quilts and spent the whole day straightening them instead of talking to a soul. Brought one quilt the next time and had the best afternoon. One good thing you can speak on honestly beats a carload.