Having relatively bare walls in our house since moving in several years ago, we’ve always been on the lookout for affordable art.  This weekend, we participated in the Ontario College of Art and Design’s (OCAD) fundraising event “Whodunit?”. Although its been going on for many years, this was our first time attending.  “Whodunit?” is basically a mystery art sale of over a thousand pieces of original art donated by artists who are famous and not-yet-famous, including well-known and celebrity artists, OCAD faculty, alumni and students.  Past mystery artists have included Margaret Atwood, Tom Cochraine, Gary Taxali and Atom Egoyan.  All pieces are the same size (5 ½” by 7 1/2”) and the same price ($75).  Although you get to preview the art, you won’t know who the artist is until you purchase it.

Here’s the process.  First, we took a look at the preview (online and in person) a few days before the sale and marked down the pieces we wanted.  Although each person is limited to three pieces, you’re advised to create long list since you’re probably not going to get all your picks.

We were #83 at 6:45.  What the @%&?  I heard there were over 40 people at 6am and the first person was there from 9:30pm the night before.  I must say, compared to my other queuing experiences, this one was really civilized and well run.  Once we got our number, we were able to take off and return for the purchasing at 10am.  No need to camp out and hang around for hours in the cold before the doors open.

The next step was to arrive at 10 to buy!  Since everyone is limited to 3 pieces, being that we were number 83, there would only be 246 (max) paintings sold before our turn (82*3).  Since there were over 1000 pieces, we thought we had an okay shot at our pick.  We had agreed to only get one piece and had three on our wishlist.  This was the first pick on our list (the girl in the middle):