I was first introduced to the work of JP Boneyard in a crowded gallery. I’d heard his name at poster events for years. so I made the trip to Austin for his pop-up event at the Mondo Gallery.
Boneyard was there with his traveling poster project, The National Retrospecticus, a collection he’s presented across the country since 2012. The gallery was tacked ceiling to floor with screenprinted posters—art prints, gig posters, event and movie posters. The collection reflected the DIY spirit of a band recording in a bedroom, printing their own tee shirts. We were the kids who had heard the strange music.
National Poster Retrospecticus, photo courtesy of JP Boneyard
For his next project the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series, Boneyard curated a collection of illustrated posters highlighting each of the fifty-nine U.S. national parks. This series introduced me to a bevy of illustrators and printmakers, and it was a chance to see artists I’d known for pop culture illustrations or gig posters taking on grand landscapes and monuments. This collection is now archived in the Library of Congress.
Boneyard’s latest project is Baseline Review, a series doing for the NBA what his Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series did for the National Parks, which is no small feat.
Baseline Review will honor 50 NBA players with illustrations and stories—the history and stats that built these legendary careers. Boneyard took a unique approach to the prints for Baseline Review. Each player has two illustrated 9” x 12″ prints, and on the reverse side of each print is the story of the player. These stories are written by voices like Clayton Crowley, Hall of Famer Jackie MacMullan, Louisa Thomas, and Kirk Goldsberry— writers who bring context and meaning to the stats and record breaking achievements. Even former players—like Celtic legend Bob Cousy—have made contributions to the book.
As a collector and fan, I am in awe of each new challenge Boneyard takes on. I had the chance to pick up a few of the prints. I’ve held them. Read them. It put me back in my childhood bedroom reading Sports Illustrated. What follows is a conversation we had on the nature of fandom and the ways we celebrate the things we love.
‘How Curry Changed the Game’ Story with Ben Taylor, Illustrations with Ryan Pancoast
CJ: I discovered your work through your traveling poster show, National Poster Retrospecticus. You followed that up with the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series. Fifty-Nine Parks exists to honor the national parks and the history of WPA posters that celebrated them so well so long ago. NPR honors those making posters, and Baseline Review honors legends of the NBA.
What is it about basketball, the NBA specifically, that inspired you to create Baseline Review? How deep into the halls of NBA rosters are you looking into?
JB: I’m so glad we met through The NPR! It’s been a vehicle for creating so many great relationships and experiences.
For the last ten years, I’ve been saying that National Parks and screenprinted posters are two of my favorite things. Basketball, history, and mythology are a few of my others, though. In 2015, I had a choice to make: Pursue what would become Fifty-Nine Parks or pursue what would become The Baseline Review. National Parks was first up, and I’ve been dreaming about The Baseline Review the entire time. Now that I have a little more bandwidth I’m stoked to dig into these inspiring stories about Basketball!
I grew up loving art, playing music, and being outdoors. Looking back, it’s strange that not a single person in my family—on either side—was into sports. Well, unless you count NASCAR a sport. In the ‘80s—‘90s there were a lot of nights spent at the track breathing in gas fumes and going half deaf from the roar of those engines. That was super exciting as a kid. I remember learning that NASCAR had its roots in bootlegging during prohibition. That’s wild!
Fast forward to 2011: I’m studying graphic design in college. I’m paying for school on my own. I see this as my one shot to get out of my small town and avoid becoming the statistic most people thought I would be. I didn’t do anything but work my tail off non-stop. I hung out with friends and family once a week at best? One night my college roommates insisted that we hang out. We lived together for two years and I was always at school or in my room working. I’m on board to hang, though, I love my roommates like family. I ask what they want to do and they say, “watch the Celtics,” I had no idea what a Celtic was. I’m watching the game confused as heck about what is going on. I’m intrigued by the color commentator (who happens to be a Celtic legend from the ‘60s and ‘70s). I’m loving the flow of the movement of the game. It feels like a band playing in concert. Even the way the people in the stands interact in unison feels a lot like being at a music event.
Long story short: The history of the game—and players—was something I could understand—even with no prior knowledge about the game. I wanted more context. I was eager to learn more about the game’s inspiring history. I sincerely watched every interview and documentary I could find about hoops online. I’d have them playing on repeat while I was designing and screenprinting posters in my bedroom or grinding on a final project for school. Needless to say, that invitation to hang with my roommates changed my life. It sounds corny. It’s just basketball but it’s true.
Part of what I find compelling about hoops goes back to my love of history and mythology. When I was 19, I was struggling. A mentor handed me a copy of Joseph Campbell‘s Myths to Live by. This changed my life and my perspective. One of the things Campbell says in his book is that society and technology are moving way too fast. There’s no way for a new mythology for our times to really take hold. He also saw a world where there were no more horizons, meaning the cultures of the world will connect and influence one another in profound ways. We are becoming a global community.
This may sound like a stretch, but I totally see the same thing in a team sport like basketball. I see a mix of people from all over the world working together for a common goal. I also see the journey of many of these players—on and off the court—as a source of profound inspiration. In some ways it’s like my version of a modern mythology: It inspires awe, reinforces the value of working together as a community, and provides varying degrees of meaning to the lives of so many people. Those are key components that also serve as the value of any mythology.
‘The Ballad Of Tim Duncan’ story by Clayton Crowley illustrations by Jonathan Bartlett
‘The Ballad Of Tim Duncan’ story by Clayton Crowley and illustrations by Jonathan Bartlett
‘The Maverick’ story by Nick Angstadt and illustrations by Arturo Torres
‘The Legend of Larry Bird’ story by Christen Teller and illustrations by Matt Taylor
I have always thought of Larry Bird as a mild-mannered superstar, but Christen Teller’s story brought other elements to the player. Bird as trash talker. Bird, athletically disadvantaged in Jordan’s eyes, yet still above everyone else. Matt Taylor’s two illustrations of Larry Bird bring all of this together—Indiana boy, a quiet superstar, a savior to the NBA. How are you finding the right artist and writer for each player?
There are a lot of fun discovery moments in the Bird story. Half of it sounds made up, right!? I grew up in Massachusetts. As a kid it was somehow communicated to me that Bird was unathletic and quite overrated. So, I had that idea of him for most of my life. Man, that’s so far from the truth. That’s part of where the inspiration for the story comes from: Let’s dispel some of that notion. Because there are still people—even former players—that see Bird as overrated.
When it comes to pairing up creatives for a story I lean on creative vision and intuition. For most stories I have a vision of what the written component—and the illustrations—could feel like. Sometimes it’s just a simple prompt. Other times it’s super specific like: “The story—in some way—will draw comparisons between Ewing and Sisyphus. The main supporting illustration will be our take on a 200-year-old etching of Sisyphus. It’ll be Ewing’s head on Sisyphus’s body. He’ll be wearing a Knicks jersey and looking determined as ever.” It’s then up to Matt Wilding (the writer) and Oliver Barrett (the illustrator) of the Ewing story to interpret the prompt and put their own spin on it.
‘The Legend of Larry Bird’ story by Christen Teller and illustrations by Matt Taylor
We like to find a balance between pairing a creative with a player they admire and pairing a creative with a player that fits their vibe. For Jerry West we always pictured someone like Charlie Griak or Marc Aspinall painting that one. We adore Ryan Pancoast’s Magic the Gathering work but knew he wasn’t super into hoops. Pairing him with Curry felt like a perfect match because he would be painting oil on canvas—a great aesthetic to match our vision of Curry as St. Sebastian. We always knew we wanted the Curry illustration to be inspired by a specific baroque painting of the Saint. When I close my eyes that’s all I could see: The patron saint of archers and athletes. To me, that’s Steph all the way.
Other times the pairing is just intuition, a hunch. I’ll put an artist’s name next to a player’s name because it just feels right. I reach out to the artist to see if they’d like to work together. I ask who their favorite player is (often having no clue at all) and their first pick is the player I’ve already put their name next to. That just happened with Parker-Nia Gordon and Dennis Rodman. I love when things line up like that—it feels meant to be!
This is your first project where you are working with writers as well as artists. How were you able to find such a high caliber roster of authors?
After reading a story I realized I was holding it like a magazine—I was handling a limited print with my hands, the collector in me was extra careful. I was thinking how I would frame them, or how exactly to display double-sided prints? It hit me—as a collectible, these prints would be at home in my bookshelf. These are prints I want to show people, like I would a book. At least, that’s my solution. You could frame the illustrations as well. These are fine art pieces, but also practical reading material. I love that they can be treated like a collectible magazine meant to be read / handled or a high-end print for hanging. Both (all) options are totally valid. Did you go through other designs before landing on this solution? How do you imagine the collection to be displayed best?
Yes! That’s the interesting thing about screenprinting these stories. They are definitely meant to be held and read—at least a few times before going in a flat file or a frame. Some frames don’t have a back (they are just two planes of glass) and allow both sides of the story to be read. We really wanted to lean into the book / magazine / zine format for these stories. These aren’t art prints. We did a bunch of R&D to try and have these double sided and folded in the middle. The logistics just didn’t work. We settled on two separate, double-sided pages, which still took a few months of R&D to lock in. Shout out to Danny Askar for doing some innovative stuff to make the printing work as well as it does! I’m still blown away!
I think it is fun to let folks decide how they want to display the stories. They definitely need something protective (plastic sleeve, frame, etc.) if they’re not being stored in a file. That way they won’t curl or have the corners get dinged.
‘The Hardwood Sisyphus’ story by Matthew Wilding and illustrations by Oliver Barrett
‘The Hardwood Sisyphus’ story by Matthew Wilding and illustrations by Oliver Barrett
As a kid, I would read Sports Illustrated, The Sporting News, and any sports magazines I could find. I would save issues and cut out photos of my favorite players and tape them to my wall. That led to collecting sports cards. If Baseline Review was around when I was a kid, these would have been high on my birthday list for sure. Did you grow up collecting? As a kid, what was your relationship to sports?
That rules! In some ways I think we’re making something that we would want to receive for our birthdays, too! As a young kid I was really into Marvel trading cards. I would save up for a month just to buy a few packs.
It wasn’t the collectability that I was into though: I was enamored with the art, the biographies, and the infographics. I was just hungry to learn more and have access to more inspiring creative work. In a lot of ways, I think those cards planted the seed for my love of art and design. As a teen / young adult I only spent my money on CDs, music equipment, and printing supplies.
The CDs were the closest thing to a collectible that I had in that era. To this day I can still tell you who I was with, where I got the CD, and roughly what year it was when I got it. I have hundreds of albums and that’s all filed away in my brain somehow. I think that’s part of what I love about the stats around sports: Seemingly random bits of data can tell a rich, fascinating story.
‘The Alchemist’ story by Dalton Reid and illustrations by Jonathan Bartlett
You are a designer yourself; you could have easily given yourself a park to illustrate for 59 Parks, or featured your own work in NPR, but you have kept your role as guide / curator for these projects. With Baseline, you’ve included your own voice—you write the story on Bill Russell.
I was curious, what kept you from including your own work in prior projects? What made this story on Bill Russell your first entry into your own business’s catalog?
Writing for The Baseline Review is something done out of necessity. Given my design and visual arts background, I know way more illustrators than I do writers. Sometimes I have to jump in to help write a story to meet a deadline. Russell is on my Rushmore of human beings. That was a rare instance where we needed a writer, I had the bandwidth, and I felt the most qualified to write about that player. I’ve read most of his books twice and have watched his interviews and docs dozens of times. Even his three hour—unedited—interview for the Library of Congress. Russ rules.
In the early days of Fifty-Nine Parks I was logging 70-hour weeks and didn’t take a vacation for seven years. I was queued up to make a poster for Glacier that whole time. During that stretch I was the only full-time person running the series. Sometimes the only person at all. I was touring 2/3 of the year, running the shop, coding the website, running social media / creating the content, art directing the series, doing the research, prepping work for print, doing accounting, handling all of the logistics, negotiating contracts for licensing, and doing most of the shipping. It’s rare to get a chunk of time where I can just focus on one task for an entire day or an entire week. Making a poster—the one thing that sounded like the most fun to do—felt like one of the things someone else could tackle while I focused on steering the ship. When Laurent Durieux expressed interest in making a poster, Glacier was the last big park left on our list. That felt like the right call to pair him up with an epic, top-ten park. I would have made a good poster. He made a great one.
My interests are also wide ranging. I’m motivated by bringing people together through art and collaboration. That’s something that is meaningful to me—it’s my counterbalance to how wild things can get in the world. I’ve also had a recurring thing happen in my life where I get really good at my craft in one area then pivot soon after. Not out of boredom or fear but out of necessity. I’m excited to have a little more bandwidth for the fun stuff during this stretch of my career. It allows me to do some of the hands-on creative work in addition to the editing, creative direction, and general management.
‘Failure Doesn’t Exist’ story by Ben Taylor and illustrations by Andrew Archer
‘Failure Doesn’t Exist’ story by Ben Taylor and illustrations by Andrew Archer
You had quite a few plans for Fifty-Nine Parks before it launched, do you have anything brewing for Baseline Review? Will you reach a point where a book is the next step?
For sure! We dreamt big with Fifty-Nine Parks. I only had $10k to my name and a ton of college debt when the series began. It was a risk to leave my job and pursue the series full time. That was a necessary decision though. There’s no way Fifty-Nine Parks could become the full vision in my mind if it was a part time focus. I still adore the experience of working on that series with so many brilliant people. I’m also grateful that we met our aspirations (and then some)!
A book is 100% the thing we’re doing this new work in service of. We’re aiming for a 2027 release. I’m often thinking of work like this as a 5-10-year journey. I already see two follow up books clear as day. I can picture the folks we’d want to work with and the places the book will end up. I also see potential collaborations with teams and / or the NBA, touring with the body of work, and a lot more! The vision is fully there.
I can see everything finished and the life this work will have as something evergreen. I’m eager to reach that destination. I can say from prior experience, though: joy is really found in the process, the challenges, the struggles. And who knows … the book may be something that a small group of people adore but it could ultimately struggle to find an audience.
Even if that’s the case, I have no doubt that this work will open doors or present some kind of inspiration, new kinds of opportunities. I see great potential here. We have a legitimate dream team of creatives working on this book. I really feel we are making something awesome together.
