What did your first gallery take, and what did they not even mention?
Mine took a small piece because it fit a wall by the stairs. Nobody said a word about the technique I'd spent a month on. I was insulted for about a week and then I realised they were right, it worked there.
So what did your first gallery actually say yes to, and what did they completely ignore? The thing you were proudest of, or the thing that just happened to fit?
I'll go first again: years later I still send them small work for awkward spaces. It's become the whole relationship.
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My first proper gallery yes was a single welded gate piece, and they took it because the ceiling beam was too low for anything upright. Two years of building that body of work and the deciding factor was load capacity. I was furious. Then I stood in the room and saw it was the only honest thing in there.
What they ignored was everything I had written. The statement, the concept, all the language. Nobody read a word, they just walked into the room and felt it or didn't. Took me a long time to admit that was fair, because the work should survive that test.
Your line about sending them work for awkward spaces being the whole relationship, that is more true than most gallery marriages. Mine is similar, except now they call me first when a stairwell defeats them. Not the career I planned. Better one, probably.
The beam deciding it, that's beautiful and horrible at once. Two years and a low ceiling. But you're right that a room doesn't lie. I've had pieces rejected by people who loved the photo of them and accepted by people who never looked at the photo at all, just walked in and stood there.
The written thing though. I've stopped writing statements I don't mean. Not because nobody reads them but because when someone does read them and the work says something else, that's the worst feeling in this job. Better to hand them the room and shut up.
The gate piece, did it stay a gate or did it become a piece. Because that's the interesting part for me.