Finally an answer: What are these things by Wichita roads?

If you’ve driven down any of Wichita’s main thoroughfares lately, you’ve surely noticed them.

Those little signs planted near the street, cut into rough outlines of people or other shapes – usually black, but sometimes in various colors.

A Facebook post earlier this week on the Wichita Art Scene page shed some light on the signs, which have been produced for the last six years.

They are the work of Kanbee, an anonymous Wichita-based artist who takes old political signs or yard signs that are thrown away and converts them into custom-cut line drawings.

Wichita artist Charles Baughman discovered Kanbee’s Instagram account about three months ago and started messaging him on Instagram, he said.

“I pursued him on Instagram, honestly, for a couple months before he would respond to me,” Baughman said. “I think it was just because I asked him really good questions. He wanted to talk about his art to somebody, and he’s never done that before. You could see the joy talking with him. He’s so happy and joyful to be making art, and to be getting this little bit of attention and be able to talk about it, I think he’s tickled, but at the same time he really wants his privacy.”

So who is this Kanbee?

Only Baughman and the artist knows for sure.

“He’s truly not an artist anybody in town knows – he’s anonymous,” said Baughman, who has since met with Kanbee in person a few times. “He’s very serious about his art ... and I’m the first person he’s been able to talk to about his art.”

Over the years, people had guessed at the identity of the mystery sign artist – could it have been Christopher Gulick, who had done a similar project in west Wichita about a decade ago, or perhaps David Murano?

Baughman said he was “surprised” to meet the actual artist behind the sculptures.

“He really wants to remain anonymous, and that’s just shocking to me,” he said. “He is completely the most altruistic artist I’ve ever met in my life. He’s different from any artist I’ve ever met, and he’s doing this for free.”

What do these mini-sculptures mean? Some look vaguely anthropomorphic, but others are more abstract.

Kanbee told Baughman “they can be anything,” Baughman said.

“He says art is like magic and a magician shouldn’t tell how they do their tricks – they shouldn’t explain away why they make something,” Baughman said. “That was him telling me today, I don’t want to explain exactly why I do stuff. I want people to interpret it on their own.

“He’s taking something that can be considered trash or nasty or divisive and he’s recycling it, remaking it into something positive and human.”

Baughman said the artist wants to avoid being seen as a vandal or anything of that nature. He puts his work in areas where they won’t cause trouble, Baughman said.

“If somebody doesn’t like it, they just pull it up,” Baughman said. “He figures he’s done literally thousands of them in Wichita over the past six years. Just this last weekend he put up another hundred over town. That’s kind of an amazing thing.”

Kanbee declined an interview request from The Eagle but did provide an artist’s statement scrawled on a piece of notebook paper:

“I draw humans, stripped of all distinctions, ready to be interpreted and collaborated with by a world of hearts. I use mystery and wonder as tools to meet the challenge of exposing my figures to every single heart I can. Materials appropriated from many origins including the divisive are available for my bending to express. My art moves me to make a difference – Kanbee.”

This story was originally published May 12, 2017 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Finally an answer: What are these things by Wichita roads?."