Your first gallery: good surprise or a letdown?
The first gallery that took my work didn't take anything I sent them. I sent the quiet collages and they picked a single small piece, hung it near the back, and it sold for what I'd have considered an insult ten years earlier. I was grateful anyway. It taught me something about expectations though.
Did your first gallery disappoint you, or did it surprise you in a good way? I hear so many bad first-gallery stories I wonder if anyone's had a good one.
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My first gallery took nearly everything I sent them, which surprised me more than anything. This was years back, before anybody was calling quilt work art, and I thought they'd want the pretty ones, the neat ones. They took the wild ones. The crooked ones. The ones I'd pieced when my heart was heavy and it showed in the fabric.
That taught me something too, honey. It taught me that what I thought was my worst was somebody else's favorite. It humbles you and it sets you free all at once.
But I've heard just as many stories like yours as I have good ones. Seems like that first one is less about the money and more about learning that you don't get to decide what lands. You just make it true and let it go out in the world. I think you got the real lesson out of yours, even if it stung some. That insult-price piece taught you more than a big sale would've.
That's a better story than most. The crooked ones going before the neat ones, I know exactly what that feels like, the odd relief of it. Someone seeing the heavy part and wanting it anyway.
I think you're right about that first one. It's less about the gallery and more about what it does to your head. Mine made me smaller for a while, then it just made me quieter. Not the same thing.
The quilts sound like something I'd like to see, honestly. There's a lot of fabric in my own work, old pages, mostly, but some cloth. I like a crooked edge.