Imagine it’s late on a Friday night and you’ve just finished a long day at work. Is there anything else you’d rather do than venture out into the night with a shoebox full of tiny ornate toadstools just waiting to be hidden in tree stumps and concrete crevices?
This is exactly what Olivia Wittenburg, creator of @toadstooltown613 on Instagram, has been doing two to three times a week since she accidentally bought too much clay for a pandemic art project.
Wittenburg is a barber at Crows Nest Barber Shop by day. By night, she’s a toadstool mastermind.
“I cut hair from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. I usually get home around 7:30 p.m. I shower, stuff my face and then I’m usually sculpting or painting from—I’d say about 8 p.m.—‘till usually 12:30 a.m. or 1 a.m.,” Wittenberg said.
Her street art project was born after miscalculating how much clay it would take to make hideouts for her pet tarantulas Morticia, Gomez, Uncle Fester, Wednesday and Florence.
Wittenburg turned that leftover clay into a treasure hunt that her community of Instagram followers looks forward to every week.
After crafting toadstools all week, Wittenburg ventures out into one of Ottawa’s neighborhoods to hide five to six toadstools. Wittenburg’s drops, the word she uses to describe this activity, often happen in neighborhoods such as the Glebe, Centretown, Westboro or Beacon Hill.
“I like to choose places that I think mushrooms would grow naturally… I wander aimlessly around the city with a shoebox and look for places and things that look good in photos,” she said.
After hiding a toadstool, Wittenburg films and photographs its location to post on her Instagram. She also alerts her followers the day before and the morning of a scheduled drop. Wittenburg said her toadstools usually get found within five minutes of hiding them.
“It was at St. Matthew’s Church,” Alvarado said. “I think the only reason it was still hidden and nobody had found it is that the church has two entrances and we had to walk through this little path to get to the other side to figure out where it was.”
Wittenburg said hiding the toadstools is her favourite part of the project and she credits fellow Ottawa street artist, Street Art Miniatures (SAM) as a source of inspiration. SAM, who goes by their artistic pseudonym, makes tiny food sculptures and hides them all over Ottawa.
“I think I stumbled across [SAM’s] Instagram account in 2017 or 2018,” Wittenburg said. “Part of my inspiration to hide my mushrooms around the city was because of them… They like to stick their little foods everywhere and I love that. So I started hiding mine.”
Recently, Wittenburg and SAM collaborated on a large toadstool drop over Halloween weekend after SAM reached out to Wittenburg on Instagram. Wittenburg said this was very exciting for her.
“It’s really nice to be noticed by someone that I idolize and encouraged by them,” she said. “I think we’re doing things that are different enough, but we can kind of come together as a team.”
SAM said in an emailed statement to the Charlatan that their collaboration with Wittenburg went well and they hope to collaborate again in the future.
When asked about the impact of street art in Ottawa, SAM described it as “limitless.”
“The impact can be massive. We are creating our own outdoor art galleries,” SAM said. “We are sharing what we love to do with others in the hopes that we can bring a bit of joy or whimsy to someone’s day or even inspire them to create their own street art and share it.”
“I just think it spices up a normal day. Do you know what I mean? If you’re walking around and you stumble across something cute or fun, it kind of just makes your day better,” she said.
As a self-professed people-pleaser, Wittenburg said knowing she’s making people happy with her toadstools is important to her.
“We’re spreading joy with our art and that’s pretty cool. I’m a big fan of that,” she said.
Featured image by Pippa Norman.
