Roadtrip !!

  Well, really it was just to Lynchburg to deliver my ceramic sculptures to Suzanne , owner of Artifacts Gallery , a great little art+craft gallery that I've worked with fruitfully for a long time now.  On the drive there and back, I was thinking about the relationships between galleries and an artist because I'm ready to expand my outlets. That's a tricky thing but in my mission statement for this blog, my intent was to relay my experience as an artist , the difficult parts as well as the successes.  Part of that is selling, obviously an artist has to sell their work in order to live and make more work but another aspect is the person selling your work. The aforementioned tricky part is that you have to throw yourself up there to be judged, hopefully the person in charge likes your work and wants to buy it. I personally feel that a buyer shouldn't just think it'll sell but they should really like your work personally. In my experience , it will come through to their own customer if they don't. If they do want to buy, there are yet more sticky parts, you have to like them, too. Well, like is a strong word, maybe trust is a better one. You rely on them to be your representative to the world within their space and to deal with you fairly and honestly. I have left very good selling galleries because I either didn't like or trust the owner,or both. Thankfully, that's unusual. Over the last 17 years (Holy Cow ! ) most people have been great to work with and sometimes, as with Suzanne , I even got a friend out of the deal.