Search

Ok so I want to hear the actual stories, not the polished "I just kept making work and eventually..." version. Mine: there's a café near me with really good light and I basically went in every week and eventually the owner let me hang six pieces. Sold two. One to the barista. I have never felt more famous than that week haha. It was NOT a gallery, it was a café, and it counted. So how did your first one actually happen? Cold email? Walked in with a portfolio? Friend of a friend? Messaged a curator at 1am (no judgement, I have almost done this)? Tell me yours, I want the real version. Also if you've never landed one yet, what's the thing you're most scared to try? I'll tell you if I'd do it.

okay so I finally landed my first gallery showing last year and the whole process was honestly such a mess I'm still not sure I did it right. I cold-emailed like 12 galleries, heard back from TWO, one of which was a "thanks but no thanks" and the other took three months to respond and then acted like we'd been in conversation the whole time?? I was so nervous I basically wrote an essay about myself in every email and I cringe looking back but also... it worked?? eventually?? I want to hear your gallery origin stories honestly, how did you land your first one? Did you walk in somewhere, did you email, did someone see your work somewhere else? Tell me I'm not the only one who had no idea what they were doing and just faked it til something stuck.

finally cold-emailed that artist whose work i've been following for years. the one whose collages made me want to start tearing up my own paper. nothing fancy, just said her piece about abandoned buildings in detroit changed how i see negative space and thanked her. she replied in like four hours. wrote back a real paragraph. i've been walking around the apartment holding my phone like an idiot. small thing but it's not small. sending the email was harder than any brushstroke i've made this month.

mine was a disaster at first: I cold-emailed a small gallery in Ruzafa with photos so bad you could barely see the glaze, and they ghosted me for four months. then a friend dragged me to an opening, I brought one piece in a tote bag like an idiot, and the owner actually liked it. still not sure if it was the work or just that I showed up in person. so tell me the real story: how did your first gallery say yes? cold email, walk-in, a friend's intro, a market where someone spotted you? and did it feel like luck or like you actually did something?