Wheat-Pasting in Denver: Frank Kwiatkowski

Wednesday, January 23, 2019 at 9:35 a.m.

Kenzie Bruce Frank Kwiatkowski, 44, has drawn since he was a child. In 1998, he took a linocut class in Denver. Linocut is a printmaking technique in which a sheet of linoleum is used for a relief surface; this is what led him to wheat-pasting. A self-described “looter,” he experimented with materials like mud flaps for the prints, which led him to trying a traffic cone as a transfer in 1999. 1/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski creates out of his one-bedroom apartment downtown, where he’s lived for more than four years. He uses the bedroom for storage, the laundry-room sink across the hall or his bathtub to clean print templates, his stove to cook wheat paste (moving the bucket around to catch water from a leak in his ceiling), and his walls to hang his prints. Tubes of prints stacked high under his window are deemed “production.” 2/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski describes his current place as “ratty,” pointing to a mousetrap on the ground, but notes that printmaking has always been a gritty art form. 3/19

Kenzie Bruce In addition to being an artist, Kwiatkowski is an activist for Type 1 diabetics. He was diagnosed with diabetes in 1982, at the age of eight, and says the experience was traumatizing. He uses his wheat-paste art to advocate for diabetes rights. 4/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski makes his own wheat paste, combining flour, water and a little sugar without measurements. He lets the water boil, then mixes in the flour and sugar. He prefers it on the thinner side. “It’s pretty time-honored. This was kind of the poor man’s glue, so it was used in Europe for centuries," he says. 5/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski uses discarded paper from architecture firms around town, and has some favorite spots. "I pretty much know where there are a few dumpsters that are used in the area by architect firms. It’s good paper, actually,” he says. 6/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski does not like politics, but his work tends toward political issues, “some on a personal level and other societal,” he says. He points to work that comments on the urban-camping ban and focus on Kalyn Heffernan, who is rolling for mayor in 2019. 7/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski notes that Shepard Fairey is also a Type 1 diabetic. “Fairey tends to take on broader political issues. You know, ‘We the people are beyond fear,’ ‘We the people,’ we, we, we,” he laughs. “To be honest with you, I don’t feel like I am part of the people, because I’m a diabetic.” 8/19

Kenzie Bruce The "Diabetics Unite" print is based on Kwiatkowski's friend Appleton (Artworks), who is an artist and Type 1 diabetic based in New York City. Appleton also pushes for diabetic awareness through his art; since surviving a diabetic coma at age six, Appleton has collected nearly every insulin bottle that has gone through his system, amounting to hundreds of bottles, as well as faded syringes and old blood strips. 9/19

Kenzie Bruce “I would consider the diabetics a different species... . I’ll make that claim. We wouldn’t be here if insulin hadn’t been unleashed. We would have happily died. I mean, I didn’t want to be stuck on insulin for 36 years and then have a ransom put on it to make matters even worse,” Kwiatkowski says. “America is horrible. When I was young, I wanted to go to Canada for socialized medicine. But now I’m actually on Medicaid, so I guess this is as close as I’ll get.” 10/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski knows the exact day he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes: October 3, 1982. "I was sick on my birthday, wetting the bed and drinking all the time. This went on for a month. I was dying," he says. His risky economic status growing up added to his traumatizing diagnosis experience. 11/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski operates a pedicab for a living, which he began doing in October 2012. He says that pedi-cabbing has kept him from pasting as much as he once did because of the physical toll it takes on his body. Another reason he is not pasting as often is his involvement with film projects, which he started in 2014. One is about heroin addiction, “Miscalculations Kill,” and one about Type 1 diabetes, “Insulin Uprising.” He hopes to release “Insulin Uprising” in 2021 to align with the centennial of the discovery of insulin. 12/19

Kenzie Bruce Recently, Kwiatkowski has had four diabetic seizures, all while working his pedicab job. The last one he had was in August 2018, at Coors Field while he was waiting to queue up. He blacked out after loading passengers and woke up in a hospital emergency room with a head injury from falling and hitting the concrete. 13/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski's favorite Type 1 diabetic of all time is Mary Tyler Moore, because she used her economic status for advocacy. 14/19

Kenzie Bruce The riskiest thing he’s ever done was wheat-pasting an RTD bus. “The 15 was pulled over and stalled, and I could hear the wheelchair ramp, so I was like, 'Okay,'” Kwiatkowski recalls. “I’m actually surprised that I haven’t gotten into trouble, but then again, Denver has really changed since 2010 or so. Doing graffiti isn’t as big of a deal as it was ten or fifteen years back.” 15/19

Kenzie Bruce "I'm pretty fast when I'm pasting — hit-and-run. When I’m wheat-pasting, I hardly ever engage,” he says. “If someone comes up to me, I’ll just start acting nuts so the person will just move on or leave me alone.” 16/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski says he likes pasting on dumpsters because they're wet and no one really cares. 17/19

Kenzie Bruce Kwiatkowski has attended Art Basel during the last three years. 18/19

Kenzie Bruce “There’s sort of a tragedy unfolding for most of the longterm Denver residents. I would leave. I’m not that attached to it,” he says. “Denver isn’t the worst place in the world; I’ve traveled enough to know that." 19/19

Wheat-Pasting in Denver: Frank Kwiatkowski

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 street 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. Local artist Frank Kwiatkowski describes the process as "grittier" than other art forms, comparing the process to dark-room photography. Here's a look at his approach, the first in a series on wheat-pasting in Denver.

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