Mood: Reflective | Post Type: Behind the Scenes | After the Show: Week +2

Would I Have a Preview Night Again?

If you read my last blog, you'll know there were plenty of highs, lows and unexpected lessons along the way while putting on my solo show. But there's one part I haven't really talked about in detail yet: the preview night.

I'd had an idea in my head of what a preview night should look like — people coming together, drinks and nibbles, getting to see the work before the exhibition officially opened. The reality was, well… a little different.

So in this blog I'm looking back at what actually happened, what worked (and what definitely didn't), and whether I'd ever put myself through a preview night again. And, because apparently my brain wasn't quite ready to let the whole thing go, nearly two weeks later it decided to stage its own alternative version — complete with a packed gallery, my dad coming to the rescue and two rather unexpected celebrity guests.

First, the numbers…

I invited 27 people to the preview.

Two never RSVP'd. Four couldn't attend. Four cancelled within the last 72 hours for various completely understandable reasons, including illness and the run-up to another exhibition.

Seven people came. Nine people said yes and then didn't turn up or contact me. I'll admit, that last one hurt a little. I'd put an RSVP on the invitation and assumed that if people had said yes, they were coming, so I hadn't really considered that I might need to check in with people again beforehand.

I'd also spent a year building towards this exhibition. The people I'd invited had been incredibly supportive of what I was doing, so I think I'd put a lot more emotional weight on the evening than I'd realised.

And, of course, we'd catered for around 20 people with wine and nibbles. There was cheese, olives, crackers, crisps and honey & mustard cocktail sausages (divine). Everything was gluten-free so that I could actually eat it too, which meant everyone else had to endure the ‘free from life’ crackers.

There were also eco-friendly plates, bowls, napkins, cocktail sticks…You get the idea. I'd even ordered 24 wine glasses because I have future plans for them and thought they'd be useful. They didn't arrive. At the time this felt like another thing going wrong. In hindsight, thank goodness. Having 24 pristine wine glasses lined up for seven people might have tipped me over the edge.

Especially as we only used one bottle of wine.

On the plus side, I came home with five bottles of New Zealand Sauvignon, which I deliberately bought because I drink it. My husband has done extremely well out of the leftover cheese, and I ate my way through the remaining honey and mustard cocktail sausages over the show weekend.

So, really, not all was lost.

Perhaps I should have thought about the date…

There were definitely things working against the evening that I hadn't really considered. When I originally booked the gallery and informally told people the preview would be on the Thursday, I had no idea that the main road would end up being closed for six weeks.

I did know about the closure by the time I sent out the official invitations, though, and had I moved the preview just 24 hours later, the road was due to be open again. There was no guarantee, of course, but still...

Then, just as I sent the invitations out, a close friend said, “You do realise that's the night of the local carnival?” Which, in addition, creates even more temporary road closures.

The carnival happens every year, but somehow the two dates had never connected in my head. It shows just how fixated I'd become on the exhibition and the plan I already had in place.

So many lessons learnt here.

I also can't do everything myself

This shouldn't really have come as a revelation, but apparently I needed another reminder. After eight or nine hours of getting everything ready — with a few disasters along the way, which you'll know about if you've read the previous blogs — I ended up changing into my dress about ten minutes before people were due to arrive.

Thankfully, I had a friend there who basically took over the food. I gave her some instructions and she just got on with it. Amazing! She also naturally stepped into the role of host, offering drinks, looking after people and even remembering to offer me one.

And that has given me one very practical lesson if I ever organise something similar again: give people jobs beforehand.

I am terrible at asking for help. I always think I can do everything myself. Yet if somebody asked me to help at their event, I'd immediately say, “Absolutely, of course.”

Apparently I don't apply the same logic when I'm the one who needs the help.

Having someone designated to deal with the food and host would have taken a huge amount of pressure off me — and next time, I'd actually ask them before the guests were about to walk through the door!

But here's the thing: the evening itself was actually lovely

The smaller number meant I could really spend time with the people who did come. Friends had travelled from the outskirts of London and Hampshire, and I'd worried they'd make all that effort only for me not to have a chance to properly talk to them. Instead, because it was so intimate, I did.

A now local couple we've been friends with for many years were there too, along with a creative neighbour and a jeweller whose work really inspires me, who came with her husband. We'd bumped into each other at Bovey Craft Festival, where she'd accidentally invited herself to the preview (her words, not mine!), so the fact they made quite a journey, road closures and all, meant a lot.
And, of course, my mum was there, flying the family flag again.
I think that's something this whole experience has shown me: sometimes people are cheering you on far more than you realise, and they probably have absolutely no idea how much it means when they actually walk through that door.
**Was I embarrassed?**
A little. There, I've said it. Technically, we had ten humans and three dogs. The preview dogs — Boo, Pepper and Zoe — definitely count. So I'm classifying that as thirteen.

And then something interesting happened

Five of the people who hadn't made the preview came during the actual exhibition. They'd walk through the door saying, "I'm so sorry I didn't make the preview night." And because there were plenty of quieter spells during the four days, I actually got to spend proper time with them.

My schedule makes it difficult enough to meet up with some of these people normally, and suddenly there we were, surrounded by my work, actually able to talk.

It completely filled my cup.

And that made me question what I'd been trying to achieve with the preview in the first place.

It also made me look differently at those nine people who'd said yes but didn't come. When some of them later apologised as they walked through the gallery door, I realised I'd probably been treating the preview more like a birthday party. A party might last four hours and, if you can't make it, you've missed the occasion. But both me and my show were going to be there for another four days, so perhaps the preview didn't carry quite the same significance for everyone else as it had for me.

And perhaps preview nights just aren't everyone's thing. Some people may have genuinely said yes because they wanted to support me, but life can feel very different when the evening actually rolls around.

So that's another lesson for me: don't take it personally. Although, with the enormous caveat that I've now hosted precisely one preview night and therefore could be completely wrong about all of this!

I still wish I'd had a heads-up, though.

Why was I having a preview night?

I've listened to so many podcasts about running an art business. It's where a lot of my knowledge has come from, and I'd absorbed this idea of the preview: people seeing the work first, collectors coming along, drinks, nibbles, all of that.

But I think I'd muddled several things together.

There's a big difference between being a represented artist whose gallery is putting on a preview and being a one-woman show who has just spent nine hours installing her own exhibition and now needs to transform instantly into the relaxed artist holding a glass of wine and welcoming her guests.

I also don't have a huge fan base of collectors waiting to see the work before anybody else. I do have people who love my work, some of whom I've met through exhibiting, and several of them came during the weekend.

That was wonderful.

So perhaps I was trying to recreate a version of a preview night that didn't really fit me, my audience or where I live.

We're rural. My family is small and dispersed, nearly all living abroad. Creative friends don't necessarily live around the corner either. What works brilliantly for an artist exhibiting in a larger town, with a big local network or an established collector base, isn't automatically going to work in exactly the same way for me.

Would I do it again?

No, I don't think I would. There's already enough pressure involved in putting on a solo exhibition, particularly when you're doing so much of it yourself. Instead, I think I'd have a Meet the Artist event once the exhibition was already up and running.

The work is hung. I've hopefully recovered from installation day. People are coming because they want to see the exhibition and talk about the work and the process. That feels much more like me. And I think that's the biggest thing I've taken from the preview. Don't automatically do something because it's the norm.

Ask yourself why you're doing it. What do you actually want from it? Do you have the capacity to host it? Does it suit your audience, your location and, perhaps most importantly, you?

The preview wasn't a disaster. Far from it. I got to see the gallery at night, which I would never otherwise have done, and I took some lovely photographs. I spent proper time with people who'd made a real effort to support me.

It just wasn't quite what I'd imagined.

And apparently my subconscious wasn't satisfied with that ending either.

Nearly two weeks later…

It was the final night of our holiday, nearly two weeks after the exhibition, when I had the most bizarre dream.

A small warning here: my dreams have always been incredibly vivid and surreal. Sometimes I wake up feeling as though I've either been in a film or spent the entire night watching one. Interesting? Yes. Restful? Not particularly.

I remember waking from this one thinking, I need to remember ALL of that. Obviously I didn't. I've got snippets.

In the dream, I was either late for my own preview or had somehow only just been informed that it was happening. When I arrived, there were lots of people in the second gallery room dancing. There was music. It was quite the party. Except people were grumbling because there was no wine and no food. So there I was again: woefully underprepared and slightly embarrassed.

And then my dad arrived. With a shopping trolley."Don't panic. We can go to the Co-op and get everything."

Even in a completely bonkers dream, this was so typically Papa. It also gave me a strange little blast from the past. I have very fond memories of traipsing up and down the wine aisles of French supermarkets with him while he searched for particular wines.

I wasn't interested in the wine. I was interested in how pretty the labels were. Some things don't change. Anyway, ‘Dream Dad’ had arrived to rescue my preview, and off we went to sort out the catering.

When we returned, even more people had arrived.

Including Orlando Bloom.

And Michael Caine.

Yep. I have absolutely no idea either!

I realise I may now have overshared quite how little my brain ever switches off, but when I woke up I couldn't wait to tell my husband who'd turned up to my preview. Seven humans and three dogs in reality. Orlando Bloom and Michael Caine in the subconscious version.

Clearly, nearly two weeks later, the preview was still playing on my mind. And perhaps my brain just decided to have another go at it. And, for the record, neither Orlando Bloom nor Michael Caine had RSVP'd.

This is Episode 31 in my ‘Solo Show Diary’ series — a behind-the-scenes look at how my work develops. You can find my earlier posts here.

Preview Night: Expectations versus Reality