Wheat-Pasting in Denver: Edica Pacha

Kenzie Bruce January 31, 2019 9:00AM

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Kenzie Bruce

Edica Pacha started wheat-pasting in 1998 as a 21-year-old, while living in a warehouse in what is now RiNo. Pacha, who grew up in Washington Park in Denver and attended Arapahoe High School, has always specialized in photography, specifically double exposures. “We’d run around putting up wheat-pastes and stickers. I wasn’t much of a painter; I’ve always been a photographer, and I would also do collage art,” she says. “I was interested in putting art up on the streets and not knowing who would see it.” She says she’s moved from "using art to cause a ruckus to using it as a tool to communicate a message."

Denver has embraced street art. There are city grants that celebrate mural-making, intended to enrich communities and prevent graffiti. Crush Walls, RiNo's annual street-art festival, documents much of that neighborhood's wall art for a year, going so far as to map out each mural or installation by intersection. With the rise in love for murals, where does that leave other, non-mural forms of street art?

Wheat-pasting, the act of using a liquid adhesive to put up artworks or posters, falls in that "other" category. The art form, largely popularized by such artists as Shepard Fairey, is accessible; the paste can be made at home, or wallpaper paste can be used. Wheat-pasting has roots in graffiti and often resides in the same gray area as that medium. Edica Pacha is a Boulder-based artist who started wheat-pasting in Denver in 1998 when she lived in an arts warehouse, Soulciety, with five other artists on Brighton Boulevard. Here's a look at her approach, the second in a series on wheat-pasting in Denver.