Where can i show my work?

[Nick Clarke]

as a youyng british artist i am completly self financed and under apreciated! (h a ha ) i am trying to make just the smalest ripple of recognition for myself but i want to start in the us! i have a huge portfolio and many peices still in pro gress all my work is B&W and finished on glass, wood, stone or metal. The smalle st peices are post card size ranging all the way up to the largest (H 6'x W 8'x L 4') 3d sculpted photos. if any one knows of a galery of any kind that might be intrested! or of any starting point what so ever i would be eternaly greatfull! N.S.Clarke

[jnorman]

first thing is to organize your work into some basic themes, or portfolios, that provide some type of cohesive connection between the pieces. gallery directors and museum curators do not want to see a wide variety of disconnected pieces of work. the first time i naively went to show my work to a gallery director, i took a couple fo my best nudes, some portraits, street shots, still lifes, etc, to show him how broad my talent was :-) he was, shall we say, underwhelmed. he flipped through my stack of carefully mounted prints in about 30 seconds, told me i had a couple of okay things in there, and told me i needed to pick out the one or two shots i thought most exhibited what i wanted to say with my work, and go develop them into a specific portfolio, explore the theme and concept, and come back and see him in a year. i did exactly that - and came back to see him a year later with a portfolio of street shots and a portfolio of moody architectural interiors. he took more time looking at the work this time, and concluded by telling me he would show either portfolio, and that's how i got my first one-man exhibition.

second - do not waste your time hanging work at local restaurants or malls or anything like that. it gets you nowhere and often is a fairly clear signal that you are not professional. spend some time learning how to communicate with professional gallery directors and museum curators, and focus your efforts on them. get to know who they are, and where they came from, and what kinds of theings they want for their collections. make contact with them somehow, go visit them and talk to them about their collections and curating philosophy. later, you will be in a much better position when you are ready to show them some of your work, but do not be too eager or try to move too fast - take your time, you want to be taken seriously. enter your best work in some high-profile competitions (not little ones or local ones). visit some museums and look very carefully at how professionals present their work - how it is sized for exhibition, how well it is printed, what kind of materials it is matted with, and how it is framed - then go make your work look just like that, just like you would if you were going to sell it for $1000 per print. poor presentation will doom you to failure.

third - learn to talk the talk. i know this seems unnecessary to beginning visual artists, who want to think that "my work speaks for me" - that's simply not true at all when you are face to face with a museum curator. they will want you to be able to discuss the origins or concept behind your work, they will want you to intelligently comment on things like juxtaposition of masses, and they will want you to be very familiar with other work in your field and the people who create that work.

hope this helps a bit. good luck.

[Steve Feldman]

Nick,

The above comments are the best you could follow. It'll take a lot of dedication and just plain hard work. Lots of rejections will follow, but it only takes one gallery to say, "YES".

Best of luck (that helps also).

Then again, you could get your feet wet, so to speak, at the Venice, CA boardwalk.

Good light,

-Steve

[Dick Roadnight]

If you want to impress people, try spelling "US" and "British" with initial capitals!

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression, so do not make your first call the gallery into which you most want to get... practice the bullshit (I mean sales patter) on people who do not matter.

Good luck

[jnorman]

dick - at least nick capitalized B&W - the important thing!

[Matthew Runde]

Nick,

There is a book called 2002 Photographer's Market that may be helpful. I believe that it lists various galleries in the U.S. It's updated every year. Amazon currently has it, and if you visit the .com version you can see pages that they've scanned.

[marius]

what i have to say because i don't now

[e]

Make friends with gallery owners or work for them to get connections. Or be great!