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ok here's one, the first gallery I ever approached (small, local, I was so nervous) basically told me to come back when I had more followers. Not "your work needs work," not "we're full," just... go get popular first. I was so mad. But also I kinda took it as a challenge? Spent the next year just posting like crazy, doing markets, building a tiny newsletter, making connections with other ceramistas. When I went back I had maybe 2k followers, not huge, but I had people who actually bought my stuff and showed up. Anyway they took me that time. And now I wonder if it was bad advice that worked by accident, or if they were kind of right but said it the worst way. What's the worst "advice" a gallery gave you that you actually ended up learning from? Or that was just straight wrong and you ignored completely?

I did a screenprint edition last month, 50 copies, three colours, hand-pulled, on nice 300gsm. Cost me about €450 in materials plus probably 30 hours in the studio. Sold 7 so far at €40 each. That's €280. Even if I sell every last one I'm barely breaking even on materials, let alone labour. And I know the advice. Raise the price. Build a mailing list before you print. Test the market with a preorder. All sensible. But there's something about making the edition first, committing to it, that's the whole point for me. The risk is part of the form. If I only printed what I'd already sold, it'd feel like a different practice entirely. I'm not complaining exactly. More trying to figure out where the line is between doing something for the work's sake and just being bad at the business side. Because I think I'm genuinely bad at the business side. But I also think the people who are good at it sometimes make work that's too safe. Any other printmakers here just accepting they'll lose money on editions because the object matters more than the margin? Or am I deluding myself.

two months ago i got in my head about "the algorithm" and paid someone $500 for a 90-minute zoom where she told me to: film myself painting (i hate this) use trending audio (i'm 33) post 3x a day (i will simply die) do a "bts" of my sketchbook (it's just bad drawings, that's the whole point) i tried it for a week and felt like i was performing having a personality instead of having one. my engagement went down. i wanted to quit painting. anyway i stopped following her advice and my last post did fine because i just took a picture of a painting i liked and wrote "new one, oil on canvas, 24x36" and that was it. 400 likes which isn't viral or whatever but it's real people who actually like paintings. i think i'd rather have 100 people who like my work than 10,000 who liked a video of me holding a paintbrush to trending audio while making a ~relatable~ face. the math might not math on that but my brain feels better.

Started this piece at 6am hyped as hell, had it all in my head, the feeling was THERE. And now it's 9pm and I'm staring at these two dead fish eyes that look nothing like the person I was trying to paint. They're technically fine. That's the worst part. They're just. Fine. No soul. I know the advice. Walk away. Come back tomorrow. But I can feel the whole thing going stale while I sleep on it. The energy leaks out overnight and tomorrow it's just a painting I have to fix instead of a thing that was alive. Sometimes I think the bad ones are my fault and the good ones are luck and I hate that I can't tell the difference.

Younger artist came to me for advice, said a gallery took thirty percent off his first solo. I told him that's nothing, wait till you price your own time as a pile of old radiators and broken chairs and realize you've been paying for the privilege of working. A collector here in Prague commissioned a piece for his villa. I quoted 18,000 CZK, which felt fair. Then I spent a month sourcing, cleaning, assembling. Did the math after delivery. Between material and hours I cleared maybe 120 Kč an hour. That's less than the guy who delivers my coffee. I keep doing this. I've told myself for twenty years that installation work doesn't price like a painting, that the process is part of it, that the history of the objects matters. And then I sit down with a calculator and it's 120 Kč an hour. Some things I did under the old regime I did for nothing because I had to hide them. Now I do them for nothing because I'm bad at saying a number and staying in the room while the silence stretches. The two feel different in theory. In practice, my bank account can't tell the difference.