There is lots of really good advice on the Internet and in books on how to get your art work into a gallery and also how to majorly fail at it.
The thing is, if you follow the advice and keep showing up at your desired galleries open exhibition, visiting exhibits numerous times and become a familiar face you will eventually meet the gallery owner or the galleries curator. And what do you say to them?
Usually you will majorly panic. You will remember that all the advice said how busy they are, how they can only afford a small attention span because of how many other artists are vying for their attention.
To demonstrate my point I will role play a scene from what would happen if I walked into a gallery and the important, career enhancing person I had been slyly searching out for months turns to me and speaks to me.
Art Person - Hello again, you come here quite often.
Me - Yes, I love your gallery.
Art Person - Why thank you. Do you buy art, make art or only come and look at it?
Me - * very nervous laugh* I make art. I'm an artist.
Art Person - Oh really, what kind of art?
Me - *Verbal diarrhea*
Basically I would tell the very important person my entire life history, babble on about my subject and materials at high speed for about a minute until they run away, slightly frightened and most importantly - not remembering anything I told them because I said too much too quickly.
Which is kind of what happened at the Marketing Seminar.
I panicked big time. We were set the task of speaking for a minute, giving a business pitch to the most important client we could possibly imagine who has just stepped into an elevator with us. Hence its name - The Elevator Pitch.
Suddenly the whole days advice went out the window.
The only thing I did do right (for the task) was I identified my audience. In a gallery setting this might not work quite the same, but asking "Are you mr/mrs gallery owner?" would be a really good start. I stood up in front of the table and started.
"I'm Sophie and I'm a Fine Art student. And you, my audience, are all here to buy lots of art from me."
That was literally the most coherent bit.
People laughed because it was cheeky and made them believe for a split second that I wasn't as nervous as I really was. Humour shows you are confident and also builds your rapport with people, putting them at ease. You could emulate this by answering something along the lines of "The kind of art you would love to own." or "The kind of art that would look really good hanging right here" and pointing at the wall and laughing with the person (hopefully they will laugh) and saying "only joking, I make such and such art"
After everyone finished the task Clarke gave us some more advice. He wanted us to write a headline. He asked us to imagine it was the subject field of an email we would send, that we want lots of people to open. I used it to summarize my art work into a short sentence that gives enough information for the person I'm speaking to to actually understand what I'm saying but not enough information that it sounds too technical or dull. It makes them (hopefully) want to know more.
So anyway mine was this - I look at whether surgical thread and dusty old coffin covers can be beautiful.
If you replace the last few lines of my previous role play with this one it has a better outcome, maybe the gallery owner will laugh and ask where I got my hands on coffin covers or maybe he'll simply ask if they can be made beautiful, to which I willl reply "yes". Either way I will have permission to carry on talking rather than just bombarding them with rushed, nervous words.
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