Wheat-Pasting in Denver: We Were Wild

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. We Were Wild is a duo between Meredith Feniak and Risa Friedman that incorporates Friedman's photography and fabric into their wheat-paste; the two started putting up installations in Denver in 2018. Here's a look at their approach, the fourth in a series on wheat-pasting in Denver.