





Over the past few weeks in a wooded area around Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, UK—a city known for quirky architecture and annual art festivals—three sculptures were surreptitiously carved into a number of felled trees by an unknown artist. These were not crude, amateur wood carvings, but clearly the work of an accomplished sculptor that the Daily Mail called “an anonymous Banksy-style guerrilla artist”. Right. Well, the sculptures are indeed incredible, and I think the world could use a healthy dose of accomplished mystery art, as was the case last year in Scotland where a series of book sculptures were left by a still unidentified individual in libraries and book festivals around the country.

The rogue tree carver’s identity was unveiled when the BBC decided to do the obvious thing and knock on the door of the person who owned the publicly-accessible private property where the sculptures were spotted, David Brown. Although Brown was unavailable for comment his housekeeper reported that the works were were commissioned from chainsaw-wielding artist Tommy Craggs who makes a living traveling around the world carving all matter of mystical creatures, animals, and figurative works into trees. Indeed in his own online gallery several photos a piece entitled King Hallow of Abbey Road identically match one of mystery sculptures found in Knaresborough. Case closed. Also there’s a gnarly looking dead tree in the park down the street here in Chicago desperately in need of Craggs’ chainsaw. Just putting that out there. (via gaks)

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