It was summer, 1998, and I had been painting for about two years, and had quite a few paintings, some of them quite good, and absolutely no money. I decided that maybe I could get some gallery interested in selling some of my work for me, and so I put together a nice, attractive portfolio, including my best work in all the different media, and set off on the bus to make the rounds. It was a really hot day, and the portfolio wasn't exactly light. I was not going out entirely without a plan. I had been visiting galleries all over Chicago for the last two years, whenever I could, seeing and learning whatever I could. The area I had picked out for this trip was the River North Gallery District, near Chicago and Wells, where there is a big concentration of art galleries in a few square block area, and I had laid out a list of particular places to touch, that all dealt in work that was similar to what I was doing, along a course that began where I got off the bus, and ended at another bus stop a few blocks away, with no wasted motion along the way.
The first place I went into turned me down cold, without even a glance at the portfolio. No thanks, not interested. I shrugged my shoulders and went on my way, figuring it was to be expected that some places would not be interested. The next place was the same. No, sorry, no thanks. Not even a peek in the portfolio, in and out in two minutes flat. These people weren't busy, I had planned my trip for a time and day when I knew these places were all open, but never had many customers to deal with. They were just sitting around. Oh, well, their loss would be somone else's gain. The next place was exactly the same, and the place after that, and the one after that, until I was finally back at the bus stop, sweating profusely in the heat, and no one had given my portfolio even a glance. This was not what I had expected. Rejection, sure, I had really figured on the possibility that the entire mission would result in total rejection, but I had not considered that my work would be rejected completely, and by every gallery, without ever having even been seen. I was truly amazed.
After I was back at home, my portfolio put away, with a shower and a clean change of clothes, I began to think about what had happened, and came to several conclusions. First, there was no place for me there, in those galleries, not today, not tommorrow, not ten years from now. It didn't matter that I had perhaps taken the wrong approach, making cold calls. Why? My reasoning goes like this: If the situation had been reversed, I would have looked. I would have had to at least peek inside that portfolio. I would not have been able to resist the urge to see some paintings, even if I KNEW that they were going to be awful. I would rather look at awful paintings, than to look at no paintings at all. This is me. This is who I am, and this is who I demand in anyone who will ever represent my work, not because I want to tell others how to be, but because any other type of art dealer and myself are not destined for a happy relationship. So I say, let there be a happy relationship, or no relationship at all. I will not change for you, you will not change for me, and that is wonderful, I will go on until I find the right person, or maybe there will be no person at all, but I cannot imagine a person who really loves art, the way I do, who would have had a closed portfolio placed in front of them, and not have opened it. To me, this lesson was worth one hundred times the sweat of a single afternoon to learn, and so, based on this and nothing else, the day was a complete success.
Second, I had to ask myself; how is it possible that all of these gallery owners or their employees, whose careers are in the fine arts, and who are not busy with some other task, can all be so disinterested that not even one will be tempted to peek? This is how I came to ask myself whether or not I had just experienced an exercise in power. Now of course, one could say this is paranoid thinking, but then, one could also say that to not consider the possibility is naieve thinking, so I am damned either way. I did consider that there is a 'right way' to approach a gallery, and that my approach had been the 'wrong way.' Those who are properly initiated, through, perhaps, having been educated at university, would know these ways, while others, like myself, who never had such an initiation, would not. This seemed, in its way, to be a distinct possibility.
I had met the enemy. These people were my enemies. They had the power to decide whether or not my work would ever be seen by the public, and their decision would not be based on the content of my portfolio, but instead, on something else, something unspoken. More serious than that; they are the enemies of my work, my art, which will, if they have their way, forever lie in its portfolio, never to see the light of day. These last are, of course, only feelings, and not facts. But, then, emotion, and not fact, is the basis of all art.