GREATEST: Tyrrell Winston

Walking around New York City is a true pleasure. Even when it’s terrible, it’s good. The streets are always filled with a myriad of characters: freaks, weirdos, bankers, junkies, frat boys, misfits, tourists, rich kids and students. Contemporary artist Tyrrell Winston walks the streets in Manhattan and Brooklyn, fascinated with what these people, his fellow New Yorkers, discard: deflated basketballs, cigarette butts, old nets, needles, acrylic nails and the like. He uses this trash to make sculptures and paintings, using color palettes, logos, and uniformity to take something that is often overlooked and forces you to appreciate it in a new light; to view it as something completely unique. Winston truly represents the old adage of “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” proving that things we throw away never really disappear.

Tyrrell Winston moved from California to New York for college. When he finished in 2008, he had a hard time finding a job. He began to stroll around to kill time, and in tandem, he visited galleries and museums. During these aimless, meandering walks he started collecting cardboard pieces and scrap paper lying around, which he would then use to create some of his earliest collage work. However, as his creativity started to burgeon, he also finally landed himself a job.

“I worked at MTV from nine to five.” At this time, Winston’s day job allowed him to work on arts programming, visiting the studios of Eric Fischl and Rob Pruitt, among others. “I got to see a whole spectrum of studio practices,” he said. “I didn’t realize what I was absorbing in those moments.” The job, and these visits, allowed him to parse out what he liked and didn’t like—a crash course in making art in one’s own environment. It worked until Winston realized it was perhaps only a means to an end: “I can’t clock in like this for the rest of my life,” he said.