Search

Spent the morning writing the artist statement for the March group thing and it came out as nine hundred words of nothing. Deleted it. Wrote six lines. Deleted those too. What I actually wanted to send: this piece is made from a photo of my brother's kitchen that I tore into about forty pieces and glued back together wrong, on purpose, because that's how I remember the room. There's a coffee ring near the corner. I left it. Instead I have a document that says "explores the tension between preservation and loss." My friend Jen read it and said it sounded like a grant application for a hospital. She's right. Anyway, my real question, and I'm genuinely asking: does anyone actually read these things, or do they just get filed and nobody looks until after the show. Mine's going in the frame on the wall and I keep thinking I should just print the six honest lines and let it be uncomfortable.

I'm thinking about the moments that surprised you in a good way with a gallery. For me it was maybe ten years ago, first meeting with a gallerist in Berlin. I brought my usual folder, ready for the standard conversation. She'd read my artist statement. Actually read it. Asked me about a line in it about layering as a form of memory, and I realised she'd thought about it more than I had in years. I didn't get the show. Didn't matter. That conversation changed how I thought about the work. What's a gallery interaction that surprised you, something that restored a bit of faith?

So a gallery in my city reached out. They saw my work online. Want me in a group show this spring. This is literally the thing I've been wanting for years and instead of being excited I've spent the last week spiraling. I keep thinking about how I've never been in a studio program, never had a crit, never had anyone teach me how to hang a show or talk to a collector. I don't have a CV. I don't have an artist statement that doesn't sound like a journal entry. And now I'm supposed to show up next to people who did all that the right way. I painted through the anxiety last night and honestly the piece that came out might be the best thing I've made all year. So maybe the fraud feeling is the point? Like if you're not scared you're not pushing it far enough? Anyone else get the thing they wanted and immediately want to run from it? Or maybe I'm just overthinking this.

I'll go first, and it is not flattering. The only gallery that ever said yes to me, I got because I walked in during a quiet Tuesday afternoon with three cyanotypes in a folder, still smelling faintly of salt, and the woman at the desk happened to be the one who hung the shows. She looked at them for maybe forty seconds and asked where the sea was. That was it. Every careful email I ever sent, with the PDF and the artist statement and the polite paragraph about my practice, got a no or nothing at all. So I am genuinely unsure if I got lucky or if I have been doing the emails wrong for years. Which one actually works for you, the email or the walking in? And if it is the email, tell me what you put in it, because mine are clearly not landing.

How did you land your first gallery? Mine was pure dumb persistence. I was fabricating for a sculptor who had a show in a decent space, and I kept coming back to install and fix things. One day the owner asked who did the welding. I said me. She came to my studio a week later and took three pieces. No slideshow, no artist statement, no portfolio. Just the work in front of her. That was thirty years ago. I still think most of it is timing and someone seeing the actual object instead of the paperwork. What about you? Email with a portfolio, a walk-in, someone who knew someone? Or did it never happen the way you planned?

I once sent a portfolio to a small gallery in Warsaw and they said no, politely, but no. And you know what? I was actually okay with it. The process of preparing the submission, getting my slides organised, writing the artist statement, it made me look at my own work properly for the first time. So even the no taught me something. Anyone else have a rejection that ended up being useful somehow? Or am I just trying to make myself feel better 😅

Installed the room last week. Three hundred and some kilos of scrap, two doors off a demolished laundry in Žižkov, a church pew I have had since 2011, and about forty meters of somebody's garden hose. It works. You walk in and the light does a thing I could not have drawn. Then the email. Title and artist statement by Friday, 600 words, in English and Czech. I have been making this work for thirty years and I still write the statement like a man filling out a customs form. Everything true about the piece is in the piece. What is left for the paper is a kind of apology for it. So I write "the work investigates the residue of collective memory" and I want to go lie down. Possibly I should just send them the inventory. Two doors, one pew, forty meters of hose, and a note saying come and stand in it. But there is a young curator there who is very sincere and I do not have the heart. Anyway. Coffee first, then the customs form.

Ok I want to settle something. I keep hearing you need a big fancy intro email with your whole CV and artist statement and a link to everything and a paragraph about your ~practice~ and honestly I think that's bullshit. The one that got me my first real studio visit was 4 sentences. Said who I was, said I make big charcoal figures, said I'd seen their show in March and the piece near the door wouldn't leave my head, asked if I could bring work by. That's it. No attachment. No CV. I think they said yes BECAUSE it was short, like it sounded like a person and not a submission. So what was yours? Paste the actual thing if you still have it, or just tell me how long it was and whether it worked. I want to know if the short one is really the move or if I just got lucky. Tell me I'm wrong, I can take it.

Had a place reach out. Wanted a full portfolio, resume, artist statement, project proposals. All before they'd even agree to a studio visit. I just sent them a link to my website and said that was all I had. Anyone else get requests like this? Feels like a lot of hoops to jump through for a shot in the dark.

Not a joke. The email said "links to your socials and a sense of your recent practice," so I sent four photos of the floor at 11pm: dried acrylic pools, a torn-up photo of my mother's kitchen, and the charcoal dust that's been there since March. Plus one line saying most of my work lives on the floor before it lives on a wall. They replied in 20 minutes. Studio visit booked for the 14th. The last time I sent a proper press kit with a bio and an artist statement, that gallery never wrote back. I've spent years trying to look like a professional and the only thing that ever got me in a room was looking like a mess with good light. Anyway. Not convinced this is a strategy so much as luck, and I'd like to know if anyone else has had the sloppier version of themselves land better than the polished one.

I sent my first gallery email with zero idea what I was doing. Didn't even have a proper artist statement, just three photos and a "hola, here's my pots" energy. They said yes anyway somehow. Now I look back and laugh, but also cringe at how unprepared I was on pricing, on commission, on all of it. What's the thing you wish someone had told you before that first conversation? Something nobody warns you about. For me it's that the gallery takes their cut off the top and suddenly your "sold!" celebration is doing math in your head. Worth it still. But I wish I'd had the numbers ready. Tell me I'm not the only one who went in blind.

My first real gallery, I did not email. I put a still-wet canvas in the car, drove there, and asked to speak to whoever ran it. I was 27 and my hands were shaking. It worked, but barely, and I still cringe thinking about the varnish smell in that office. So: email with the portfolio, or show up at the door? I say email, then wait, then go. When I was young I went first and it cost me nothing but pride. What did you actually do to get in front of someone? Tell me the thing you would not put in your artist statement.

Had a gallery owner come through the studio last month. Walked around for twenty minutes saying almost nothing. Looked at the welds on a piece I'd done three years ago, ran a hand over the stone base, asked me what grit I finished with. I told her 400 by hand, same as always. She nodded and wrote me a check for a show next spring. Ten years ago I would've prepared a statement, cleaned the studio, rehearsed what to say. This time I had grinder dust on my jeans and half a sandwich on the bench. She didn't care. She wanted to see how the work was actually made. I think the whole performance of being an artist is getting in the way for people who can actually make things. You spend so much time trying to look like an artist you forget to just be the one holding the tool.