Bio
Nathalie Kalbach is a Jersey City-based mixed media painter, writer, and preservation advocate. A self-taught artist who immigrated to Jersey City from Germany, she brings an outsider's attentiveness to the buildings that most residents have stopped noticing, painting urban architecture as archive, tracing the lived histories and individual identities embedded in the places we pass every day.
Working in acrylic, ink, pastel, and collage, Kalbach uses interpretive, emotionally resonant color to document place through feeling rather than fact. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Novado Gallery and the Museum of Jersey City History, and received critical attention from critic Tris McCall, who included her shows among the best of both 2024 and 2025.
Her practice extends beyond the studio — she serves as an advisor on the Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy, and hosts Nat's Sidewalk Stories, a podcast exploring the stories of creatives, preservationists, and community advocates across the New York metropolitan area. Her forthcoming book If These Walls Could Talk, narrated by an 1890s city home, traces the histories a house witnesses through generations.
Fall in love with where you are — one impression at a time.
Artist’s Statement
I paint buildings I don't fully understand yet, drawn to them before I know why - researching backward from a feeling toward fact.
I see buildings as archives: biographies that hold emotions, official and hidden stories. Narratives told and untold. Shaped by who has power to tell, hide, or alter them.
My paintings, in acrylic and mixed media, explore that gap in luminous yet saturated color. Some position the viewer at a threshold - a window, a balcony, the street visible but just out of reach. That distance is not romantic. It is the particular unease of someone who chose a place and knows she will never fully arrive.
Growing up in Germany and coming to American cities as an outsider, I learned to read buildings as a way of making sense of a place I wasn't born into. Place is not a backdrop. It is part of who we are.
My work explores what gets preserved and what disappears, and how the angle from which you look shapes everything you see. I paint what's at stake when a place disappears and what we lose when no one thought to ask.
Downloadable CV
NATHALIE KALBACH
Jersey City, NJ | natkalbach.com | nat@natkalbach.com
EXHIBITIONS
Solo
2025 — If These Walls Could Talk, Novado Gallery, Jersey City, NJ Ranked #8, Best Jersey City Art Shows of 2025 — Tris McCall, Jersey City Times 2023–2024 — Sidewalk Stories, Museum of Jersey City History, Jersey City, NJ Curated by Lucy Rovetto Ranked #7, Best Jersey City Art Shows of 2024 — Tris McCall, Jersey City Times 2015 — J.C. Street Views, Beekman Lane, Jersey City, NJ 2013 — Hamburgendsie, RAe Klingner & Kollegen, Hamburg, Germany
Selected Group & Public Art
2026 — In the Wind (forthcoming), Art House Productions, Lincoln Park, Jersey City, NJ Supported by NJEDA A.R.T. Phase II Grant Program 2025 — Art in Sixes, Delaware Valley Arts Alliance, Narrowsburg, NY 2025 — The Gigantic Miniature Show, Deep Space Gallery 2025 — Summer Mosaic, Novado Gallery, Jersey City, NJ 2025 — 36th Cathedral Arts Festival 2024 — The Affordable Art Show, Art House, Jersey City, NJ 2024 — Around The World in 80 Images, Project Greenville 2017 — Protect Our Rights, ShuaSpace Gallery, Jersey City, NJ 2016 — Urbanomics, JCAST Flagship Gallery, Jersey City, NJ 2015 — gentrification: The changing landscape of Jersey City, 313 Gallery 2014 — Group Exhibition, JCAST, Rotunda City Hall, Jersey City, NJ
CIVIC APPOINTMENTS & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Advisory Board Member, Jersey City Landmarks Conservancy (2023–present) Led Historic Preservation Master Plan Workshop Co-Initiated JCLC Oral History Projects
WRITING & MEDIA
If These Walls Could Talk (forthcoming) — narrative nonfiction Artful Adventures in Mixed Media (2017) — North Light Books Host, Nat's Sidewalk Stories podcast Contributing writer, Artists Magazine, Cloth Paper Scissors
TEACHING
Faculty, Pratt Institute, Continuing & Professional Studies (2015–2020) Founder, Creative JumpStart Summit (2012–2022)
EDUCATION
Certificate in Historic Preservation, New York University (2024) Legal Studies, University of Hamburg, Germany