FREE ART: An anonymous artist is leaving free art all over Yellowknife

There is an artist leaving free art all over Yellowknife — and nobody knows who it is.

Well, that's not quite right. Somebody knows who it is… but nobody is giving up any names.

The mystery started when Sue Glowach was on her morning walk to work. It was a dark, mid-winter morning in Yellowknife and Glowach was in low spirits. 

"I was kind of trudging along, thinking how I should be anywhere else but walking into work that day." That's when she noticed a little wrapped package on top of a snowbank.

"I looked down and it was wrapped in really pretty black and white wrapping paper. There was a sticker on the outside saying 'FREE ART'".

Glowach looked around to see if anybody was watching her. After confirming that nobody was, she decided to pick up the package and take it to her office.

"I opened it up and it was a beautiful little wood burning of the image of Gandhi. So I propped it by my telephone and it sits there to this day. [When I look at it] I think of a time when it was dark and cold and it sure picked up my spirits."

Glowach isn't the only one who's stumbled across a random piece of art in Yellowknife. Anonymous random artwork, usually small portraits burned into pieces of wood about the size of a Canadian passport, have been left all over the city in the last few months.

When Glowach found her artwork she reached out to CBC Yellowknife producer Joanne Stassen, who immediately took on the case. Ever since, Stassen has been trying to find out who's behind the mystery art and why they're doing it.

Her first step was to reach out to other people who had found art. There were dozens. 

Next, she reached out to other Yellowknife artists, "I started to think that I might be able to find the artist just by talking to other artists," Stassen said. "And if I didn't find the artist at the very least I could get some insight into what's in the brain of an artist if they give their work away for free."

Sure enough, Stassen found some leads. Local artist Jessica McVicker had heard about the mystery artist, she even knows a witness who saw the artist place one of the pieces in the city. But when pushed for a name — even the name of the witness — McVicker wasn't budging, preferring instead to keep the mystery alive.

The desire to keep the artist's identity a mystery has become a recurring theme in Stassen's investigation, one that's begun to win her over. She realized this in a flash after the artist reached out to the CBC by leaving a package on the Yellowknife station's front steps. 

Within the hour a room full of journalists were scanning the surveillance video back and forth in slow motion. Sure enough, Stassen could see the person who had left the art.

But that's when she decided to stop digging. 

"I think the Facebook world would be able to tell us who this person was... but I just haven't been able to post it on Facebook. It's just, it's not in me. I've kind of discovered that everybody's closed rank on this artist and and they're protecting them from being discovered. They like the mystery of it all."