20 results for “shipping”
just got an email from a gallery i was excited about, they want me to ship insured, but when i asked what value they want me to declare, they said "whatever you think is appropriate." like that's not how insurance works?? i'm pretty sure i already know the answer here but i'd love to be wrong, is this normal? did i just dodge a bullet or am i being paranoid? for context my last gallery experience was the one that strung me along for six months and then ghosted, so my radar could be off.
Got approached by a gallery last year that wanted me to cover shipping there and back, plus insurance, before they'd even put my piece in a group show. No guarantee of sale. Just my cost to get it in the door. I told them no. They acted like I was the unreasonable one. I've heard worse since. What's the most ridiculous thing a gallery has asked you to swallow the cost on?
so I'm shipping a painting to a buyer, right, my first sale in like two months that's actually a decent chunk of change, and I've spent 45 minutes bubble-wrapping this thing like it's a hostage situation. I get to the UPS store and the guy behind the counter watches me put it on the scale and goes "you know, you really should be using a rigid mailer, not a box, the box is gonna shift around in transit." and I'm like oh okay thanks but it's already packed pretty tight, I've got foam corners, it's fine. and he just WOULD NOT let it go. he's like "I ship art all the time, you're gonna get a claim" and starts telling me about the proper way to do it while I'm standing there with my debit card out. like sir I did not ask. I did not come here for a consultation. I came here to pay you $18 to put a sticker on my box. I know he was probably trying to be helpful but I was this close to being like "okay and how many watercolor paintings have YOU shipped that were still wet this morning and you stayed up too late stressing about the corners", I didn't say it because I'm a coward but I wanted to. anyway it arrived fine. no claim. I'm gonna frame that delivery confirmation and put it on my wall.
First gallery I was with, I was young and glad to be there. Signed everything they put in front of me. Two years in I found out they'd been holding back 20% of the framing, shipping and insurance costs I was supposed to be paying direct. Nothing criminal, just buried in a contract I never fully read. My fault as much as theirs. I was too eager to look like I knew what I was doing. These days I put everything in writing before anything hangs. Who pays for the opening, who covers shipping, what happens if a piece sells in the first week versus the last. Even then they'll try things on. What's the clause or agreement you wish you'd nailed down before your first show? I'd be curious what bites people most.
Had someone message me about a commission back in February. Wanted a small piece, maybe 40x40cm, in mostly smalti. We went back and forth for two weeks, she wanted a discount, wanted free shipping, wanted me to throw in a smaller piece "as a gesture." I held my ground, said the price is the price, and eventually she went quiet. I figured she'd moved on. Three weeks later the full amount shows up in my bank account with a one-line email: "Same dimensions as discussed, please proceed." No apology, no explanation. Just the money. I made the piece, shipped it, never heard from her again. Not even a photo of it on a wall. I still don't know what to make of that interaction. Part of me thinks she tested me and I passed. Part of me thinks she just got tired of negotiating and decided to pay. Either way, the lesson I keep landing on is: if you're confident the work is worth what you're asking, the haggling either resolves itself or it doesn't, and either outcome is fine. You don't have to win every conversation. Just don't be the one who folds first.
So a gallery I was talking to, small, not huge, but seemed legit, wanted me to ship them a bunch of pieces on consignment, cover the shipping myself, no guarantee anything would sell. I asked about the split and they sent me their "artist agreement." 70/30 their way. For a solo show. And I'd be paying for the opening night drinks out of my 30%. I laughed and said no obviously. But I'm still thinking about it, what IS normal these days? Like what's an actual fair split for a small gallery that's actually doing the work? I've heard 50/50, I've heard 60/40 artist-favoring, I've heard some places do 70/30 the artist's way if the artist is bringing the collectors. What are y'all actually seeing out there? What's walking-around real vs what's them trying it?
Okay so I've been doing the full-time artist thing for 8 months now and today I shipped my first actual commission. Not a print, not a little piece at a market, an actual person who messaged me asking me to paint their grandmother's garden. Their GRANDMOTHER'S garden. There were reference photos of this old rose bush and a rusty bench and I spent three weeks obsessing over getting the green right because greens are the devil honestly. Anyway I sent it off this morning and then I just sat in my car outside the post office and cried a little. Not sad crying. Just like. Oh, this is real now. Someone trusted me with their memory and I didn't mess it up. My dad died when I was 19 and I painted my way through that whole year, and I kept thinking today about how painting someone's garden feels like the exact opposite of that. Like here's a thing that's still alive and growing and someone wanted me to hold onto it for them. And the grandma apparently cried when she saw the photos I sent before shipping, which made me cry again. My partner just handed me a towel and said "this is your whole personality now huh" and he's not wrong. Not really asking anything, just wanted to tell people who'd get it. What's the last thing that made you cry in a good way?
what's the one thing in a gallery contract you read and immediately knew you weren't signing? for me it was exclusivity within the city. i get it, they don't want me selling out of my studio down the street, but i'm not locking myself to one space when rent is due and the other gallery two blocks over actually sells my stuff. ngl i asked them to strike it and they did, which told me more about them than the whole rest of the contract honestly. what's yours? the commission split that gave you pause, the "artist covers shipping" fine print, something weirder? tell me i'm the only one who's crossed stuff out like a toddler with a crayon.
Spent three days welding a knee joint for a figure and only noticed when I went to grind the seam that I'd built it mirror-image. Left leg where the right belonged. Two hundred pounds of steel and I stood there looking at it like it was someone else's work, because it was. Shaped wrong by a man who's done this for thirty years. Cut it apart this morning. Salvaged maybe sixty percent. The rest is scrap. What bothers me isn't the wasted steel, it's that I looked at that thing off and on for three days and my eye told me it was fine. You trust the eye or you don't, and mine lied to me until my hands finally caught it. Makes me wonder what else I've shipped out that I never caught.
Gallery show five years back. They wanted exclusive rights to sell my work for the run of the show. I was younger and dumber so I said fine. They took the pieces at 60% of what they were going to price them at. So if they sold a piece for $10,000 I got $6,000 before expenses. That part I understood. What I didn't realize until later was they were pricing my work at 2.5x what I'd ever sold anything for before. So I'm thinking I'm getting 60% of a fair price. They were pricing it at whatever they thought they could get and I got 60% of that. One piece sold. A welded steel figure I spent three months on. They priced it at $14,000. I got $8,400 minus the crate and shipping which they billed back to me. I netted about $7,200 on a three-month piece. At the time I thought that was great. Now I think about the guy who paid $14,000 and wonder what he'd think if he knew I got half that. Still not sure what the right deal is. But I won't do 60/40 again without a say in the retail price.
I sold a piece last year through a gallery in Berlin. Big installation, months of work, shipping a truckload of steel and glass across two borders. The collector paid 18,000 euros. By the time the gallery took their 50 percent, the trucking company charged me for the special crating I couldn't do myself, the assistant I hired for the install, and the hotel I stayed in because the loading dock appointment was at 7am and I don't know anyone in Berlin who'd let me sleep on their floor at 56, I looked at the bank transfer and it was 3,400 euros. The framer who built the crate made more than I did. I know because I asked him what he charged. He told me. Nice guy. He earned it. I'm not telling this as a sob story. I agreed to the terms. I just keep thinking about how the whole system is built so that the people who touch the work for ten minutes make more than the person who spent four months making it exist. And we all nod and say that's how it works. But it's funny, no. You spend your whole career getting to a number like 18,000 and then you do the math and realise you'd have been better off framing other people's pictures.
I'll go first. Early in my career, a gallery in Vienna offered me a show. Nice space. Nice people. They just needed me to pay for shipping both ways, the opening catering, and their "promotional materials", which turned out to be a photocopied A5 flyer. I said yes because I was young and wanted the line on my CV. The show happened. Nothing sold. They asked me to cover the "storage fee" for the work that hadn't moved. I paid that too. What's the red flag you saw early, told yourself it was fine, and then it absolutely was not fine?
A gallery contacted me last year, really interested, came to the studio, said all the right things about the work. Then the email: "Would you consider working in acrylic instead of oil? It would ship easier and sell better." I said no. Maybe that was stupid. But oil is what I do, the way it moves, the drying time, the glazing, it's not a preference, it's the whole practice. I don't know how to say what I want to say in acrylic. Has a gallery ever asked you to change your materials or your style to fit them? Did you bend or did you walk? I'm curious where the line is for other people.
Got approached by a gallery last year that wanted me to cover the cost of shipping both ways, the opening catering, and a "marketing fee" before they'd hang my work. Told them I'd pass. Never sat right with me. What's the worst "you pay us" pitch you've gotten? I'm trying to figure out where the line is between normal and predatory.
I finally got my first gallery interest last year. Small space, local, nothing fancy. They were excited about my pastels, I was terrified and thrilled. Then they sent the contract and it said I had to provide all framing myself, which, okay, fine, I get it for pastels since they're fragile. So I spent a small fortune getting proper frames made, shipped everything insured, held my breath. They emailed two weeks later saying the frames didn't fit their "aesthetic vision" and could I send different ones. I couldn't. I'd spent everything on the first set. So the whole thing fell apart. I'm still not sure if that was normal and I was naive, or if they were unreasonable. What's the weirdest thing a gallery has asked you to do that made you go... wait, what?
First gallery I ever worked with sent me a list of shipping requirements longer than their contract. Specific box dimensions, exact void fill, white gloves for handling, photos of every step. I thought it was ridiculous until the first piece arrived cracked because I skimped on the packing. What's the most unreasonable delivery or install requirement a gallery ever gave you? And did they turn out to be right?
I'll go first, porque I was so desperate for a yes I talked myself out of every alarm bell. Gallery asked me to pay for shipping both ways and take a 60% cut, and I was like "sure, that's normal right?" It was not normal. Piece sat in storage for four months, they never even put it up. What red flag did you spot and walk into anyway? Or the one that made you run. I need to know I'm not the only one who ignored the obvious.
After a year and a half of watching from the sidelines they finally trusted me with an actual 17th-century map at the studio. Not just humidifying and flattening, the real thing. Tear repairs, filling a loss the size of my thumbnail, the whole slow careful dance. I've been doing conservation work since art school but always behind someone. Yesterday I sat with that map for six hours and my hands did not shake once. That sounds like a small thing but it isn't. The paper is so thin you can see the light through it and there's something about touching something that old with your bare fingers, knowing you're the one responsible for it being there tomorrow. My coworker said the map smelled like tobacco and old ships. It doesn't. It smells like nothing at all, which is what three hundred years of being properly kept does to paper. I think that's the part I love. Nothingness that was fought for.
someone in my building was moving out and left a stack of shipping boxes out back. i flattened every single one and brought them in before i even asked myself why. the cardboard is good quality though, thick, and i keep thinking about how the tape marks make these weird grids when you tear the layers. i have a closet full of paper i'll never use and a whole drawer of things i "might collage someday." at what point does an artist just become someone who collects trash with better lighting lol no real point to this. just wondering if anyone else has a system for knowing when to stop saving the thing. because i clearly don't.
First gallery I ever showed with tried to talk me into cutting the steel myself and eating the cost. Said it was "part of the process." I told them no. The material, the labor, that's my job and my money. They backed off, but it taught me early that a gallery will test what you'll give away. Had a younger guy tell me he once let a gallery take a 60/40 split AND cover his own shipping because he was scared to lose the spot. That stuck with me. Where's the line for you? What's the thing you won't eat even for a good wall?