Yucca Art Gally, Old Town Albuquerque, NM

Many people use the shot gun approach when searching for gallery representation. They just randomly send out applications to mulitple galleries without knowing anything about any of them. However, there is a better (and more professional) way.

Do your research. Check out the galleries you are interested in and determine they are a good fit for your artwork first. This means type and style of work, pricepoint, and even the career stage of the artists represented.

Find out the gallery’s procedure for applications. Not every gallery is accepting new artists, and even if they are, they probably have a set procedure in place for reviewing them.

More tips on how to find the right gallery for your art

Wind Dancer © Lucht Studios, LLC

When I have business cards printed, I always include an image of one of my sculptures on them.

People attending art fairs and group shows often pick up cards from numerous artists. If you just have a plain card, it is very easy for yours to get lost in the group. If this happens, even if someone is still interested in buying a piece from you, they may not be able to tell which card is yours.

Unfortunately, these days we all get inundated with large amounts of paper. If someone can’t remember why they picked up a particular business card, they are more likely to throw it away.

But, if you have an image of your artwork on the card, it will serve as a visual reminder of your work – so maybe the potential customer will be more likely to hold on to it. It’s worked for me – I’ve even had customers tell me that they had my card pinned to their fridge or squirreled away in their wallet for months or years before they bought a piece.

The purpose of a subject line is to get the recipient to actually open the email. It is often the first impression you portray – so shouldn’t you make it count?

First off, always include a subject line in your emails. Many email programs will warn you if you try to send an email without a subject line and since I tend to write the body of my emails first and leave the subject for later, I can’t tell you how many times this has saved me.

Second and just as important, make your subject line is clear and to the point. Frequently we receive emails with vague or even suspicious looking subject lines. Do you know this can cause your email to end up in the recipient’s spam folder? And, even if the spam filter doesn’t catch them, we are often hesitant to open emails with suspicious subject lines.

Third, don’t use the subject field as the message itself -  this just makes your email unclear. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened an email that seemed to start mid-sentence and had to look at the subject in order to figure out what the heck the sender is talking about.

Think about the quality of your subject line when composing an email, after all its purpose is get your recipient to open the email and read what you have sent.