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The price of a 5-colour screenprint of mine sat at 120 euro for over three years. Not because I did the maths and it came out at 120. Because 120 was the first number I said out loud to someone at a group show in Kreuzberg and after that it felt like a fact about the work. Meanwhile each impression takes me about forty minutes of actual printing, plus the screens, plus the paper which is Fabriano and not cheap, plus the ones I ruin. If I count properly it was maybe 110 euro of my time per print before anything goes wrong. So I was charging people roughly the cost of the paper and a coffee. In January I changed it to 190. I wrote the new price in the spreadsheet, told the two galleries, and waited for the small humiliating email. Nothing happened. One person bought two instead of one. That is the part that disturbs me more than the money. I think what was actually keeping the price down was not the market. It was me deciding in advance that the work was worth less than what I was asking, and then politely making sure everyone else agreed. Which is its own kind of conceptual problem, and not the interesting one I wanted to be working on. Still haven't raised the etchings. Those are at 260 and I know they should be 340 and I have the email drafted. It's been in the drafts since February.

So I've been full-time for eight months now which means I've been doing all the "okay so I guess I have to market myself" stuff that nobody prepares you for in art school lol. And the thing that actually worked, the thing that got me my first real gallery relationship, was the most humiliating process ever. I spent a weekend sending 40 cold emails. Like, proper ones, with images and links and a real bio. And I got one reply. ONE. And honestly for like two days I was so embarrassed I almost didn't open it because I assumed it was a no too. But it was a yes. A small gallery in a city I'd never been to, but they liked my work and wanted to talk. That one yes turned into a group show, which turned into two commission requests from people who saw the show, which turned into enough money to pay rent for three months without panic-ordering takeout. Anyway I'm not saying cold emailing is the secret sauce, mostly it's just brutal lol. But I think sometimes we hear about the one reply and not the 39 silences. So here's my question I guess: what's the thing you tried that felt stupid or embarrassing or like it wasn't working, and then it kind of... did?