Skip the roses and chocolates. This Valentine’s Day, give the gift of art.

Jerome Tiunayan’s new holiday print release “Better Half” captures what love is all about: sacrifice, commitment and devotion. Commissioned expressly for Valentine’s gifting by Vertical Gallery owner Patrick Hull, “Better Half” (which showcases Tiunayan’s semi-autobiographical signature character and the boy’s canine comrade, a stand-in for the Chicago-based painter’s mini goldendoodle Mochi) is signed and numbered in an edition of just 25 copies, and sized at 16 by 20 inches — perfect for standard frames.

“Better Half” kicks off the Vertical Collectors Club series, which features exclusive seasonal-themed releases from the gallery’s favorite artists. In the latest installment of our web-exclusive interview series Five Questions with…, Hull pulls back the curtain on Vertical Collectors Club’s origins, and previews what’s coming next. 

Question 1: How did the Vertical Collectors Club concept take shape? 

Patrick Hull: It just seemed like a fun thing to do. I'm always looking for ways to stay in front of our collectors, and to grow our collector base. We've been doing print releases with our artists for years, but I've been wanting to do something a bit more organized, and this felt like the perfect time to do it. 

An artist creating an original work for a print release is a slightly different twist to how prints are usually done. Usually when a painting is created, it’s shown somewhere, and then a print is made at a later date. But “Better Half” was created for the sake of being a print. We’re also making the original painting available for purchase, which is another twist. I’ve been a collector for years, and I’ve never seen a release quite like this one.  

Question 2: Why did you launch the series with a Valentine’s Day-themed print, and why was Jerome Tiunayan the right artist for the job?

A print release needs a purpose. Tying the first release to an event like Valentine’s Day seemed like a clever idea, but I didn’t want a big heart on paper — not that that’s a bad thing, but I wanted to offer the kind of work I would frame and hang on my wall all year round. 

”Better Half” is Jerome’s first print release through a gallery. I knew he would take the Valentine’s Day idea and interpret it in his own artistic way, and he hit it out of the park with the very first image he sent me. It’s exactly what I was looking for. 

Question 3: Where will Vertical Collectors Club go from here? 

All releases in the series will be very limited, affordable editions priced in the $200 range or below — “Better Half” is $165, for example. We’re going to release a new print every six to eight weeks, and when people purchase this first print, we’re giving them the option to secure the matching edition number of the next one, which will be by Laura Catherwood.

As you can tell by the name, it’s a collectors club — right now, the focus is on prints, but eventually, we may offer something other than a print. It could be hand-finished editions, it could be objects, or it could be something entirely different. We’re keeping our options open, and making sure it remains an interesting project for the artists that we work with.

Question 4: Shifting gears, Vertical Gallery celebrates its 13th anniversary this year. What can collectors expect?

We always have a theme for our anniversary shows, and this one is pretty basic: it's 13 artists, and it opens on Friday, the 13th of March. Each artist is doing four works each. Some artists we haven't shown in over a year, some are the usual suspects you see frequently in our shows, and there's one new artist in the mix who’s never shown at Vertical, or even shown in Chicago before.

The exhibition will be at Jackson Junge Gallery in Wicker Park. It’s the first time we're doing an anniversary show at a different location. Partnering with galleries can really be a win-win: We're bringing our customers to them, and I'm sure there's gonna be a lot of their people viewing a Vertical Gallery show for the first time, too. 

Question 5: What else is in store for Vertical during the coming months?

We've got Collin van der Sluijs booked for July. We're partnering with Joy Machine Gallery for that. We’re doing a big group show at Frame Chicago in September — over 25 artists. And we just booked Aqua Art Miami once again, so we will be returning to sunny South Beach. We’re doing another group show like we did in December, and I’m just starting to put together the group of artists for that exhibition. It’s going to be another busy year.