News — Artist Spotlight

Florist fills the cracks of urban life. The London-based artist’s hand-cut, pixel-patterned mosaic installations transform blight into beauty, bringing color and purpose to forlorn spaces across Europe, India and Africa. 

Now Florist (@florist.ldn) is setting his sights on America. On July 1, Vertical Gallery will release “Stars, Stripes and Stems,” his first screenprint for the U.S. market, produced in celebration of the nation’s 250th anniversary. Learn all about Florist’s blossoming career in the latest installment of our web-exclusive Artist Spotlight series. 

Vertical Gallery: Tell us about “Stars, Stripes and Stems.” 

Florist: It's a symbol of affection for your country — for your culture and your way of life.

There's an artist here in England called Fat Cap Sprays, and we went out for a walk the other day. He said to me “It was really refreshing to hear you say on one of your Instagram videos that you love America. That’s a very controversial thing to say.” Which I think is absolutely bonkers. There are parts of any presidency that people aren’t going to like, but I'm not here for that. I'm here for the America that I loved seeing on TV when I was growing up — the films, the cartoons, the stories, the history. 

I’m sure somebody's gonna pick apart all these things. That's the time we live in, where everybody's arguing over everything. But I just really love America, and I'm not afraid to say that. 

You’ve installed mosaics everywhere from Manchester to Mumbai. Where and how did you learn your craft?

I lived a lot of my life going off the beaten track, and not being as productive as I wish I was. I was drinking and taking drugs and stuff like that. When I got sober, I decided I needed to do something with my life. I had a folder with mosaic photos I’d saved from Instagram, and I was like “I want to do that.” I wanted to create something that would last, you know?

I started out by watching videos on YouTube. I scoured [French street artist] Invader’s videos, trying to learn how to make it efficient and quick. But the process is very confusing to get across in a video, so I became quite stuck. I then paid for a very short course at the London School of Mosaic, which has since closed down. They liked what I created, and said that I should apply for a scholarship. I got the scholarship, but I only stayed there for one term. To be honest, it was too slow, and I already knew what I wanted to do: I wanted to fill these bits of plaster that have fallen off of buildings or whatnot. 

At first I wanted to fill them with quotes, or proverbs, or famous lines from films or songs. But it was too complicated. The biggest mosaic I did read “In the blue of this life,” which is a line from the Beach House song “Lazuli.” It meant the world to me. But when I showed it to a friend of mine called Joe, he said “What the fuck does it mean?” He didn’t know the song. I realized anybody walking by is gonna objectively look at it and be like “It’s meaningless.” I needed to focus on images, so that people can draw from them what they want. 

What is your process? What kinds of materials and tools do you use?

Originally, I would make old-style mosaics laid by hand, the way the Romans and the Mesopotamians made them. The name for that is Andamento [an Italian term for the visual flow, movement and directional lines created by a mosaic’s tiles, known as tesserae]. Putting them up in the street is a real challenge, though. The version I do now is called “pixelated,” and it’s a lot quicker. You just slap the tiles down. You can do a square meter in about three days, whereas a square meter in old-style mosaic will take you a week.

If you’ve ever seen mosaics laid out in grid fashion inside a swimming pool or a sauna or a steam room, there are grout lines in white or black or grey. I don't like grout lines, so I had some trays 3D-printed to remove them. The tiles sit next to each other, held in place using industrial-strength glue. The rest is just my eye — knowing which colors look good, where to put the piece on the street, visibility, and stuff like that.

It takes so long to make a mosaic. A lot of thought goes into it, and it's expensive, so it's kind of soul-crushing when the stars don't align and one gets removed. But with some of my mosaics, the stars have aligned, and they're still there. They're the best ones. Someone recently shared with me an image of a piece I did last year in Barcelona. I love the art, but I'm more interested in the fact that it's still there. It means I did a good job.

Where did this passion for mosaics originate in the first place?

I love repeating patterns. I’ve looked into why using a bit of ChatGPT — Freudian psychology, Jungian psychology and stuff — and it's probably to do with the safety of predictability. The cityscape is chaos. It's lights, it's police sirens, it's this and it's that. A repeated pattern that fills a space gives people a sense of calm very deep down.

I’m most interested in mosaics and alfresco wall paintings from the antiquity period — art that’s stood the test of time. When I was young, I went to a Roman villa, where I saw a mosaic of Medusa. I vividly remember my teacher saying to me “Don't stare at it, or you'll turn to stone.” 

Why did you adopt the Florist alias?

I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between humans and flowers, and how that must have come about. Flowers are just the most beautiful things in the world. They’re arranged for weddings, anniversaries, deaths — the most profound moments in our lives. I remember reading in a book by [self-help author] Eckhart Tolle that flowers could have been the first form of currency.

There was also a game I played when I was younger, called Final Fantasy VII. I loved this game so much. A character in it is called Arieth, and she was a florist — a flower seller. Arieth gets killed in the game, and my friend Dean and I have always said that moment was kind of our first introduction to grief. It was just so sad. 

What’s next for you?

I’m in ‘Ascending’ [Vertical Gallery’s September 2026 group exhibition]. I've spent the last few days thinking about what to submit. This will be my first U.S. gallery exhibition. I'm excited for that. 

I've also been toying with what to put in Brick Lane, a spot near where I live in London. During the daytime, there’s a lot of commerce there — people buying stuff. At nighttime, there's a lot of addicts running around, and a lot of drunk people. It's the last place you would go for tranquility. I want to do a waterfall: rocks and flowers and a blue sky. Something that would really stand out. It's all about creating little moments of serenity.

PURCHASE "STARS, STRIPES AND STEMS" HERE

Laura Catherwood’s mysterious, often mournful paintings and pencil illustrations capture the landscape of her inner world, where fauna, flora and the fantastic coalesce.

Laura exhibited in Vertical Gallery group shows like ‘Atomic Number 13’ and ‘Water the Plants!’ ahead of 2022’s ‘Book of Yielding,’ her first solo showcase in our space. ‘Hearsay’ followed a year later, and Laura graced Vertical’s main showroom again in 2024 with ‘All Things Stirring.’ She’s also served as gallery manager since January 2021.

From Sept. 5-27, Laura co-headlines the group show ‘The Scenic Route’ alongside fellow Chicago-based painters/Vertical teammates Joseph Renda Jr. and Jerome Tiunayan. In the latest installment of Vertical’s Artist Spotlight series, Laura previews her contributions to ‘The Scenic Route,’ shares her appreciation for a West Town landmark and takes us inside the pages of her new career retrospective book ‘Gestures from the Field.’ 

Vertical Gallery: Tell us about your contributions to ‘The Scenic Route.’ 

Laura Catherwood: The pieces I'm putting in this show are a love note to Humboldt Park, which is the natural refuge within Chicago that I've lived across from for the last 12 years. It means a lot to me to have this beautiful lagoon and prairie preserve right next door, in the middle of the big city. I genuinely love standing on the bridge and watching the baby ducks walk on the lily pads.

The animals in these paintings all take a unique path of movement to find a different perspective. For example, in one pair of paintings, there’s a deer and a fox floating above the prairie. I wanted to capture the specific feeling of Humboldt Park, so I went there every day for a week straight for reference portraits — specifically, when the sun was at the angle I wanted, during the golden hour [the period shortly after sunrise or before sunset, when daylight is its reddest and softest]. One time, I was able to photograph some rabbits to use their fur and their backlighting as reference for other animals; another time, my husband Bryan held up a blank panel while I took reference photos of the individual plants. 

It’s all about making the work as genuine as I could. These are my neighbors, and they deserve to be honored. 

Please answer the same question we asked Jerome: What goes into a group show like ‘The Scenic Route,’ especially when you’re working alongside close colleagues?

We're far more connected as a group than your typical group show. The combination itself makes it a very cohesive show, even though we have three distinct styles. We all share this love of the natural world, and a lot of care goes into our painting technique. There’s also calmness, I think, in all our pieces. They have a tranquility to them.

We didn't coordinate with each other what we were going to paint. We painted the things we wanted to paint, but they were naturally going to work together well. The grouping itself was the intentional part. 

You’re about to publish a book. Tell us about it.

‘Gestures from the Field’ includes my paintings from ‘The Scenic Route’ all the way back to 2019, when I first showed this kind of work in a gallery. It made sense to release it now, because the book as a whole is also a gesture of appreciation and love for the environment surrounding me. 

Looking back like this isn't something I usually do. When you're making something, you just focus on that thing: I only think of things one body of work at a time, and once I'm done, I'm thinking about the next one. But It's interesting to see how things get honed, and the direction they go — what sticks when I experiment with something, and what doesn't. Every time I make something, I do something a little bit differently, so it’s pretty cool to watch that progression in one swoop.

I also got to re-explore where my mind was when I was making this work. You might think it'd be hard to put yourself back in the frame of mind of something you made five years ago, but it was actually very easy to remember the things I was thinking and feeling, and how they made their way into my art. 

What’s on the horizon?

My next body of work will be coming at Aqua Art Miami 2025 with Vertical Gallery, and in March, I have a solo exhibition at South Shore Arts in Indiana, plus my usual group shows. 

I'm also painting nine murals around the city of Chicago. They are snapshots of invasive species that are being studied by Dr. Gabriela C. Nunez-Mir from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She received a Walder Foundation grant for her research on invasive species, and the grant involves a public outreach component, so that's why I'm painting them for her. They're each very small — three-and-a-half by four feet. They're mini-murals, really.

Jerome Tiunayan synthesizes personal storytelling, comics-inspired illustration and gallows humor to recast the Hero’s Journey for our postmodern age. His spirited, narrative-driven paintings depict the semi-autobiographical misadventures of his signature character and the boy’s faithful canine sidekick (inspired by Jerome’s dog Mochi) — a radical, career-redefining break from the bleak, inky catharsis of the artist’s previous professional work. 

Jerome (IG: @gohomejerome) first appeared at Vertical Gallery as part of 2024’s Summer Group Show. He resurfaced at year’s end for our annual Holiday Group Show, and most recently appeared at the gallery’s 12-Year Anniversary Show in April 2025. Jerome also joined the Vertical staff part-time in October 2024, soon after relocating from his native Brooklyn.  

From Sept. 5-27, Jerome will co-headline the Vertical group show ‘The Scenic Route’ alongside fellow Chicago-based painters/Vertical teammates Joseph Renda Jr. and Laura Catherwood. In the latest installment of Vertical’s Artist Spotlight series, Jerome previews his contributions to ‘The Scenic Route,’ shares the mindset behind the work and explains why death is only the beginning.

Vertical Gallery: ‘The Scenic Route’ represents your fourth appearance in a Vertical Gallery group show. How is this new work different from what you’ve exhibited here in the past?

Jerome Tiunayan: I don’t know if I would use the word “different.” In my previous work, there was no real throughline: it was just my character and his dog in different places. This time, I wanted a more focused, cohesive story, and I didn’t want to rely on the environment to tell the story. I relied on the character. 

It’s a very deeply personal story. If people want to ask about it, I’m not going to pull any punches — I’ll tell them everything they want to know, and everything that went into it. But I want the work to be enigmatic, and I want to keep it mysterious.

‘The Scenic Route’ pairs you opposite two other Vertical fixtures. Take us behind the scenes — what goes into a group show like this one, especially when you’re working with close colleagues?

One half of me — the one I leaned into most — didn’t want to be the weak link. The more people there are in a group show, the easier it is to get away with shittiness. But with only three people, you’ve really got to be on point, or else the whole show suffers. I’m very aware there’s a hierarchy: Joe and Laura are much further along in their careers, and they’ve achieved much greater success than I have. I respect them a lot, and admire their work ethic. I just wanted to be good enough that my work didn’t take anything away from theirs. 

The other half of me was like “I’m going to smoke these fools” [laughter]. I really want the work to be good, and I want people to come into the gallery and think “Damn, he held his own” or “I like this stuff more than the other stuff.” It’s a balance between wanting to be invisible and make [Joe and Laura] look good, and wanting to separate myself a little bit. 

The last time we saw your character, in April’s 12-Year Anniversary Show, he died. Now here he is back again, the picture of health. What meaning does death have in your world?

It’s a chance to start over. I like that idea. I also like the idea of leaning into cartoon reality, where characters die but reappear in the next episode. Things just keep going. I like that suspension of disbelief. 

I can’t be too precious about where I am, the work I’m making and the story I’m telling, because there’s always room for another one. If a part of me has to die for things to continue or live on, I’ll lean into that. That’s the whole impetus for making this work [with my character]: I had to leave part of me behind to lean into this stuff. 

Your paintings tell a classic boy-and-his-dog story. Why does that narrative trope continue to work after all this time, and across so many different mediums?

Because longing for companionship doesn’t go away. We’re all hardwired for community, and we want to go on adventures with others, instead of just doing things by ourselves. 

Have you ever read Into the Wild [Jon Krakauer’s 1996 non-fiction book about Christopher McCandless’ ill-fated hike across North America into remote Alaska]? Just before he died, Chris McCandless wrote “Happiness is only real when shared.” I never forgot that. He fancied himself this vagabond, but in the end, he wanted someone there with him. People always want someone to lean on, now more than ever.

What’s next for you after ‘The Scenic Route’?  

I’m exhibiting with Vertical at Aqua Art Miami 2025 in December. I’ll have six pieces there. I’m keeping the concept close to the chest, but I’m very excited about it. 

Joseph Renda Jr. is a Vertical Gallery institution. The Chicago-based pop surrealist painter (IG: j.renda_artist) first exhibited in our space in 2017 as part of our all-star holiday pop-up event, and in mid-2020 we presented ‘Biophilia,’ his first-ever solo gallery show. A second solo showcase, ‘Larger Than Life,’ followed two years later. You can find Joe’s work for sale on our website, including pieces never exhibited in the gallery. 

In the debut installment of Vertical’s Artist Spotlight series, Joe previews his newest work, tips his hat to René Magritte and explains why surrealism is here to stay.

Vertical Gallery: You’re exhibiting next month in Brussels opposite French street artist Onemizer in an Affordable Art Fair duo show presented by Galerie One. Tell us about the work you’re presenting. 

Joseph Renda Jr.: Around the end of 2023, I began revamping what I’m doing with my art, and what I want to be doing. At that time, I was packing in as much visual imagery as I could, and everything was so busy. I wanted to take a step back, and do something more refined. 

I developed a series about freedom, free will and choice — the things in our lives that we can control, and those we can’t control. All of the pieces included a cloud, which is a motif for freedom. A cloud can take any form, and it can go anywhere. It’s also a contradiction, because it’s really heavy, but it floats in the air. Some of the pieces were about manmade objects built to contain the cloud, and others were about objects built in order to reach the cloud. 

The paintings I’m exhibiting in Brussels are similar in concept. They bring back the landscapes and larger-than-life objects in my previous work, but I’m still focused on keeping things simple, although painting them wasn’t simple, because I was painting things that were complicated. There are three paintings with bricks — hundreds of bricks between them — and I painted each brick individually, which took a lot of hours. 

Belgium is the birthplace of René Magritte, a profound influence on your work. What does it mean to you to exhibit there?

It’s awesome. What I like about Magritte is that everything in his paintings exists within reality, and when I first visited Brussels a year ago, I saw how much the environment influenced his work. So many of the interiors in his paintings came from inside his own house, like the fireplace in “Time Transfixed” [a.k.a. 1938’s “La durée poignardée,” part of the Art Institute of Chicago’s permanent collection]. I’m hoping the Brussels audience will respond to Magritte’s influence on my work. 

One hundred years ago this November, Galerie Pierre Colle in Paris presented ‘La peinture surréaliste,’ the first-ever group survey of Surrealist painters, among them Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Paul Klee. Why does surrealism remain so relevant and so resonant a century on?

The point of all art is to make people think. Landscapes and portraits do it in a certain way, pop art does it in another way, but surrealism does it so effectively because it’s visually odd. You can’t look at a surrealist painting without questioning something about it. No other medium does that. 

When I look at work by the artists I love, whether it’s Magritte or Salvador Dali, HERA or Collin van der Sluijs, it feels like it comes from their subconscious. I’ve always wanted to do that, but it’s not how I create. I’m very much a planned painter, which is why I like Magritte’s juxtapositions — the real things in odd situations.      

Will surrealism endure for another century?

Surrealism came out of World War I. Life was as crazy then as it is now, and the Surrealists created work that expressed their confusion. As long as the world stays crazy, there will continue to be surrealist artists. 

Besides Brussels, where can we see your work in the months to come?

I’m part of a three-person Vertical Gallery show in September alongside Laura Catherwood and Jerome Tiunayan. I’m creating a series of paintings on windows, exploring what windows mean to people and treating them as portals to different places. Windows are a motif that recurs throughout my work, but this is the first time I’ve made them the focus.