Tyrrell Winston has skyrocketed to popularity as an artist who often uses sports as his inspiration.
His deflated basketball series — where he takes basketballs, deflates them and installs them on walls — is the most well-known.
He also has a series called Punishment Paintings, in which he paints an athletes signature over and over again on a canvas and has done recent collaborations with Reebok and the '47 Brand.
Often inspired by cards, he convinced PSA last year to slab some of his work, which led to a conversation of working together more.
“What happens if we slab a whole collection of ephemera, each of which is one of one?’,” Winston asked a company rep.
They agreed to do it.
“What’s really exciting about it is, it allows the card world to be more comfortable with the art world,” Winston told cllct.
On Thursday, Winston's one-of-one slabbed art pieces will go up on LouisBuhl.com, an offshoot of the Library Collective, the Detroit gallery that represents his works. Prices range from $850 to $2,000, more affordable than the typical Winston piece.
There’s an old Michael Jordan Gatorade ad that Winston signed and put an image of the Winston cigarette brand on it, a name that he shares and connection he often plays off. There’s a pressed paper greek coffee cup with Winston’s writing on it and a check he once received that spelled his name wrong to which Winston replied in pen, “2 R’s, 2 L’s motherf------s!"
Winston said he’s excited for these pieces, but expects some tension from collectors.
“Any time you are trying to cross over, it’s a dance,” Winston said. “And I’m OK with that. I don’t do my work to make people happy, and if I piss off an equal amount of people, that’s cool. If you don’t have both no one is talking about you."
Winston believes slabbing is essential on some of these works. “It gives it a greater sense of importance,” he said.
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct.com and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectible market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.