Home Grown: The collector with a unique album cover art section

Because every record collection has a story.

Home Grown is our series profiling you lot and your excellent record collections. Taking our cue from the brilliant submissions to the #VFRecordCollections thread on Instagram, we want to share a little of your hard-earned love for vinyl with the world.

Each week, we’ll be profiling a different collector from around the world and finding out what makes them tick. Want in? Send us a pic and a few words about your collection to [email protected]

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Name: Olivier Verhellen

Location: Antwerp, Belgium

# of records (approx.):

My complete collection is somewhere around 3,000. This micro-collection of albums with contemporary art featured on the cover is about 150. Here it’s all about quality over quantity.

I have the usual suspects, like the Warhol banana sleeve or zipper, lesser known gems from well known artists (Basquiat, Barbara Kruger, Jackson Pollock), and a selection of Belgian artists.

How long have you been collecting for?

Twenty-five years. My collection with art record covers started with Warhol’s iconic banana sleeve for the Velvet Underground. Sonic Youth’s Dirty was also a big inspiration to start a collection based on a very specific theme, like art covers.

What part of your set-up are you most proud of?

My Dual record player. It’s a gift from the lady that lives next to my childhood home. Even though my childhood neighbours had to endure years of loud music when I was a teenager, they gave me this record player two years ago.

What record(s) are you most proud of?

One of my most treasured records is an album by Gerard Herman. The sleeve is hand drawn by the artist with my initials on the center. He only drew five, and all five are different. The drawings are part of a series called ” Pissed corners”.

What does your record collection mean to you?

This part of my collection combines my passion for vinyl and for contemporary art. It also makes these high profile artists very accessible. The collision between visual art and music is really exciting.

A musician or a band isn’t always responsible for choosing the artwork to be featured on the album cover. Often artists are commissioned to make work specifically for an album. Or the artists themselves create an album, so the album is a kind of multiple. A real piece of art. So art doesn’t necessarily need to be experienced within the walls of museums and galleries. Anyone can build an art collection.