- Artist Alissa Hrushka said she left one of her sketches at coffee shop Java Punk in 2019.
- Two years later, she found it on the wall of another coffee shop she'd never been to before.
When Alissa Hrushka walked into Dynamo Coffee Roasting in Colorado Springs for the first time in 2021, she was surprised to find one of her own sketches on the wall.
The Colorado-based artist told Insider she had created the pencil sketch of Belgian singer Stromae's "Racine Carrée" album cover two years before, and left it at an entirely different coffee shop.
But that cafe, Java Punk, had shut down during the pandemic, and somehow Hrushka's work had made its way to Dynamo Coffee Roasting.
Although it's been two years since she found her sketch there, Hrushka posted a video to her TikTok account on September 6 to remind her 108,000 followers about the time she came across the drawing, captioned "had to remind y'all of this wild story." As of Friday, the video has over 6 million views.
@alissasart had to remind yall of this wild story #art #artist #everyoneisalwaysconnected #sketch #fyp #viral ♬ Ev3ry0ne i5 always c0nnect3d - :/\
"Leaving a sketch in a coffee shop that shut down due to COVID," Hrushka wrote in the text that appears over footage showing her leaving the sketch on a table at a cafe. The video then cuts to the drawing on the wall at Dynamo Coffee Roasting, with the text: "Finding it two years later on the wall of a new coffee shop."
Hrushka, now 19, told Insider that in 2019 she decided to start leaving some of her sketches in coffee shops she frequented. The artist — who has gone on to become a studio art major at Oregon's George Fox University — said she left pieces in a few coffee shops in Texas and Virginia, as well as Colorado Springs. At each one, she said, she'd simply set her work down on a surface with her Instagram or TikTok handle, without telling staff.
"I thought sharing art with strangers was exciting," Hrushka said. "You wonder who will find it and if it will even be found. It could be thrown out, or it could be taken home, or it might just make someone smile."
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Java Punk — like many businesses across the nation — shut down. According to the former cafe's website, it shut its doors in February 2021.
In its place, Dynamo Coffee Roasting opened in June 2021.
When Hrushka visited Dynamo Coffee Roasting, she initially thought the cafe looked familiar and later realized she'd seen the space on Instagram. She told Insider the cafe had started following her on social media, but was confused as to how they found her. "I have a small following on TikTok but that's spread over the country, not local," she said.
It wasn't until Hrushka saw her sketch on the wall of the coffee shop that she realized they must have found her details from the picture. "It was surreal and so exciting," the artist said.
Leah Hotop, cofounder of Dynamo Coffee Roasting, told Insider that she and her husband and business partner, Will, found Hrushka's drawing while going through items that had been left behind by the previous tenants of the building.
"From the beginning, we knew that we wanted to feature Alissa's sketch in the gallery wall as our first local artist," Hotop said. She added that she wanted the space to be community-forward and include a dedicated space for local artists. Hotop said she tasked her friend Lydia Keller of Steadily Design with creating a mood board to reflect this, and that all the decor in the space was either second-hand or made by local artists like Hrushka.
"We were so excited when she came in," Hotop told Insider, of meeting Hrushka. "I started following her art page the first time I looked her up." She added that she tried to get in touch with Hrushka when she found her artwork, but the artist's privacy settings meant she couldn't reach out to her directly.
Hrushka told Insider that when she approached Hotop and told her she was the artist behind the sketch, the Dynamo cofounder was "very nice and even offered to give it back," but Hrushka refused. Hotop said Hrushka also turned down her offer to pay her for the sketch.
"I was just excited someone else was enjoying my sketch," Hrushka said. She added that while she has sold art and taken on commissioned work in the past, she's not focused on selling her art at the moment.
"Art is meant to be shared, and even if it isn't hung up on the wall, it could lead to more connectedness," she said.
Hrushka added that she hopes to continue leaving a trail of her art again.