Episode #213: On Art, Loss, and the In-Between with Andrea McKenna
About This Episode
Andrea McKenna's studio journey spans from a century-old garage on a Jersey City dead-end street to her aunt's former bedroom in Fort Lee. In this conversation, we explore how personal loss transformed her artistic practice, the evolution of Jersey City's art community, and what it means to hold space for other artists while navigating your own creative path. Andrea shares the story of the Raven Gallery, her seven years as gallery director at Art House Productions, and her collaborative performance piece "Arboreal Soul" with choreographer Megan Woods; a meditation on grief through movement and visual art.
Meet Andrea McKenna
Andrea McKenna is a visual artist, curator, and gallery director at Art House Productions in Jersey City. For over 20 years, she ran her own decorative painting business before dedicating herself full-time to her fine art practice and curation work. Her paintings explore what she calls "the in-between world" - the liminal space between life and the afterlife- work that emerged through processing profound personal losses. From 2014-2017, she co-ran the Raven Gallery with her best friend Javiera Rodriguez, creating a vital space for Jersey City's handmade artisan community.
Connect with Andrea McKenna:
Andrea’s Website: https://www.andreamckenna.com/
Andrea’s Instagram: @andreamckenna19
Upcoming: “Arboreal Soul” collaboration with Megan Woods - November 15-16, 2025 at Art House Productions - get tickets here
Key Insights
Andrea's artistic practice transformed after her mother's sudden death, with her paintings evolving to explore grief, spirit, and "the in-between world" between life and the afterlife
Her 20+ years as a decorative painter and faux finisher gave her a deep understanding of texture and materials that now defines her fine art practice
The century-old wooden garages on Jones Place in Jersey City served as her creative sanctuary - a "she shed" where she painted furniture and stored artwork, despite lacking insulation
The Raven Gallery (2014-2017) on Newark Avenue was born from a one-year experiment with her best friend Javiera Rodriguez, becoming three and a half years of some of Andrea's most treasured memories
Being both artist and gallery director at Art House brings unique empathy - Andrea understands the fears, anxieties, and challenges artists face when presenting their work
"Arboreal Soul," Andrea's collaborative installation with choreographer Megan Woods, explores the five stages of grief through 50 minutes of movement and visual art, originally performed at Grace Church
Space constraints shape artistic practice - from painting in Jersey City's peaked-roof bedroom to converting her late aunt's Fort Lee bedroom into her current 12x12 studio
Jersey City's art community became a second family, offering support and constructive feedback that helped Andrea feel comfortable showing her work
Visual Documentation
The Navigator by Andrea McKenna - Courtesy of Andrea McKenna
Rooted by Andrea McKenna - Courtesy of Andrea McKenna
Arboreal Soul (For You) at Arthouse Productions - tickets here
Coming Up Next
My next guest is Duquann Sweeney, a photographer who truly cares and puts love and the call for all of us to use our imagination into his wonderful work.
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Andrea McKenna Interview Transcript
Slightly edited for legibility
Nat Kalbach: Welcome to Nat's Sidewalk Stories. I'm Nat Kalbach, and today I am talking with my friend Andrea McKenna. She's a visual artist, curator, and the gallery director at Art House Productions in Jersey City. Andrea's story weaves through Jersey City's creative community in unexpected ways, from a century-old garage studio on a dead-end street to transforming her late aunt's bedroom into her current workspace. Her art spaces have always been sanctuaries for making sense of the world through art.
Her paintings explore what she calls the in-between world, the space between life and what comes after. It's work born from personal loss, but it's also deeply connected to the community she's built over nearly two decades in Jersey City.
From running the Raven Gallery with her best friend Javiera, to now supporting other artists as they navigate their own creative journeys. This is a conversation about how grief transforms into art, how spaces hold our stories, and how community becomes family.
Hey, I'm here with my friend Andrea McKenna. I'm super excited to have her. Hey, Andrea, how are you?
Andrea McKenna: I'm good. How are you? I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for asking me.
Nat Kalbach: Yeah, of course. I've been waiting for this for a long time, so I'm super excited that you're here. But I want you to tell us a little bit about yourself before we start. So who are you, what are you doing here, and what do you do in a nutshell?
Andrea McKenna: In a nutshell, it's a big nut, I'll have to tell you. It's a big nutshell. My name is Andrea McKenna. I am a visual artist, and I am also a curator and I curate for Art House Productions in Jersey City. I am their gallery director, and I have been doing that for seven years.
I went to art school and I've been painting since then. I also was a decorative painter, an interior faux finisher, and I had my own business for many years, for over 20 years. And I just ended that in '23 because, you know, just getting tired of being on the ladder and carrying five-gallon buckets of plaster upstairs and all that kind of stuff. So that got a little tiring. So I thought I could concentrate more on my art and the curation that I was doing. And it's worked out so far. It's okay.
Nat Kalbach: I love your artwork. In fact, years before we knew each other, I did a thing for my blog to talk about art that I have seen, and I have pictures of your artwork that I've taken many years ago over the years. My gosh! Because I'm just like very drawn to your artwork. The way the materials, how you present it, you oftentimes make your own frames. And it always really spoke to me. And we want to talk a little bit more about your artwork, but you also used to live in Jersey City, so I want to start with that, because you told me that there was a garage studio on a dead-end street.
Both: Mm-hmm.
Nat Kalbach: Yes. And I want you to paint us this picture of your creative sanctuary when you were still living in Jersey City.
Andrea McKenna: Okay. Well, I met my now husband in 1995 and he lived in an apartment on Tonnele Avenue, right near Journal Square. And so I've been going to Jersey City since then, but it was in '99 that I moved there with him. And we lived across the street from this little house that I fell in love with. And after about three and a half years, we were finally able to move into that house. It became vacant and it's on a street called Vroom Street, V-R-O-O-M, which everybody's like, oh, I love that name. You know, it's the best. Yeah, it's very cool. Between Bergen Avenue and Summit and this little house was the cutest little house in Jersey City. I thought it was a Cape style. It had blue shutters, it was freestanding, we had our own little yard in the back, but it was concrete. So I got to, you know, do all the pots and plants that way. And it was such a cute house. The bedroom was on the top floor, and the bottom floor was just a kitchen, a living room, and a dining room. And our basement was the length of the entire house, and it was as clean as could be. The landlords that I had were just the best, and their apartments were just so amazing. They, the way that they upkeep things and pay attention to all the details. And they became like a second family to us. And the house was just great. We lived there for 17 years actually. Wow. In that one house. And right next door was a house that was, I guess, the corner house and that's off of a dead-end street. So when you come down Vroom Street from Bergen, there's Tuers Avenue and then you go down a little ways. And then your next left is this dead-end street and it's called Jones Place.
Nat Kalbach: Mm-hmm.
Andrea McKenna: So Jones Place is the corner. And then when you go into the back there, there were all of these garages that were attached to each other. It was a huge parking lot, a huge gravel parking lot. And there were like, there was like about 18 to 20 of these wooden garages that were barns. They were a hundred years old. And when you open the doors, let's see, the size is about 10 by 20, 10 by 20. The ceiling was all wood. It was kind of like slanted. Some of them even had these big hooks in it and you know, and the hardware was just giant, giant hinges on the doors and really, really cool. And so I was able to get one of these and I parked in front of it because it was a parking lot. And so when you parked in front of one of these garages, I thought, oh, do I automatically get this? And they're like, no, there's a waiting list actually. And so I was like, damn it. But pretty soon after somebody moved out of it and I was able to get it and it was just the greatest thing ever because at the time I was painting furniture. Because that was also part of my business. And everybody that knows me in Jersey City always knew to call me whenever they saw something on the sidewalk and they're like, this is on the sidewalk. You should come get it. It's so great. So sometimes I'd pick it up and sometimes I wouldn't. But I had this garage where I was able to paint furniture and store my artwork and all kinds of things, and it was just like my little she cave or whatever you want to, she shed, she shed's what they call them. Yes. It was the best. It was so great. I miss that, but it wasn't insulated, so I really couldn't work in it in the winter and in the summer it got so hot that sometimes it was unbearable, but it was just a great place to be away from the house and quiet sometimes at night, you know, and it was just so you hear the crickets and you're in this garage and you're painting and it was really just a cool, cool spot. Wow. So I miss that place. I do miss it. Yeah.
Nat Kalbach: That sounds so cool. I love that. Tell us a little bit about your art?
Andrea McKenna: So my art has been through many evolutions, I would say. The influence on my work comes from a tragedy, I guess. You know, in the beginning, I made a lot of these sort of animated type figures, I call them. And it was just something I enjoyed doing. And then when I started my business as a decorative painter, I didn't paint for a long time because I was creating this business and trying to make a living. And after I sort of got settled into the business and getting used to that routine, I went back to painting. And when I did that, a lot of things were going on in my personal life that sort of led to creating work that was on a different level. It was sort of, I don't want to say trauma based. Mm-hmm. But I guess it was just a way to deal with grief. Mm-hmm. And a way to deal with, you know, things that were happening. And it sort of, it happened kind of by accident because in 2013 my mother passed away and it was very sudden. And where I painted in the house was actually in my bedroom because I didn't have a lot of room in the house and I painted in the basement, but the basement was like five feet tall and I'm almost six feet tall. So it was a little hard sometimes to be there. So I was creating these couple of paintings in the middle of when my mother passed away. And so I stopped painting obviously to, you know, grieve for my mother and all of that. And when I went back to the painting, I started working on it in a different way. And I realized as I looked at it that it was looking like what she died from. She had a massive cerebral hemorrhage, which basically just, you know, did her in instantly and the painting I was working on. All of a sudden I noticed after a while that the head was sort of broken apart and it was like a spirit was leaving the top of the head in a sense. And it didn't dawn on me until months later. And I thought, wow, that's really interesting. And I had a different title for it before she passed. And after she passed and I realized that this was what I was painting, I changed the name of the painting and turned it into something positive. So the title of the painting is called The Navigator.
And it's a very strong, sort of androgynous figure, and it has this sort of broken head. So I connected to this painting in such a way that I thought, this is kind of the way that my work is going and I really loved it. So I just kind of continued down that, not purposely thinking I'm going to do work that's based in grief, but it just naturally happened that way. So the more paintings that I made, it just kind of had this sort of dark narrative to it, and they, the figures started to evolve in a way that looked more ghostly, more spirit-like, and the bodies and the heads started to get broken up with the texture. I was using texture because I learned to use that in my business and my decorative painting. And I love texture so much and I thought, Hey, I should use what I'm using here, over here. So the business gave me a lot of different materials to use in the work that I love doing. So it just kind of made sense that this is what was happening in the work. And then about four years after that, I lost another very, very good friend of mine. He was a carpenter and we met on a job and we became fast friends and sort of, he was like building furniture for clients and building cabinetry, and I was going in and painting them. So we were working together and I was actually using his shop at the Art Factory in Paterson. So I kind of moved in there and I had all my furniture in there and he was fixing it and he was also making like one-off pieces and I was painting them, and it was sort of that upcycle furniture that was very popular. And I had the gallery at the time, the Raven Gallery, so he was putting those pieces in there and so we were working together, but he passed away, unfortunately, at, he was only 34 years old. That was, that was pretty traumatic for me because I had never known anyone younger than me die so suddenly. And just, it was, you know, just boom, he was gone. And he was like a brother. I mean, he was like family. I still know his family today. His father became my contractor. I'm still close with them. And it just, yeah. It was just like, okay, that sucks.
And then four years later, I lose my best friend, Javiera Rodriguez, who I had the gallery with, and she died from COVID. And that was very traumatic experience. Did not think that that was going to happen. And so all the while that these things were going on, my work was just, it just became focused on dealing with grief.
Nat Kalbach: Mm-hmm.
Andrea McKenna: And that's just the best way that I could explain it, because, you know, the paintings don't look like death themselves. Some of them look a little darker than others, so the work I think was affected by the things that happened in my life. All this stuff and dealing with death. And then I had my own health issues in that period of time. And you just, you start to think about the afterlife. Yeah. Which is something that I really think about when I am painting. So to me, the figures that I am painting are sort of in this in-between world of what's going to happen after you pass on and like, where are you going? What happens to your body? It disappears and your spirit is still there. Mm-hmm. So it's almost like the work is in that in-between world. Mm-hmm. Of, you know, right after you die, your spirit leaves you and you're floating or whatever it is that happens to you. I believe there is an afterlife, what it is of course we don't know, but that's kind of what I think of when I'm painting.
Nat Kalbach: So you moved back to Fort Lee where you grew up, after all this happened, right?
Andrea McKenna: I moved back because of that, because the house that I grew up in was owned by my parents and my aunt, my mother's sister. She lived on the first floor and I grew up on the second floor. And it was an old house that my grandfather purchased in 1943 with his best friend. So in 2020 when my aunt passed away, the world was going just kind of crashing and burning all around us with COVID. And I was not really working as a decorative painter. So didn't have that income. And I had to deal with my aunt's estate. And since the house was left to me and my sister, my sister wasn't going to move here because she had her, she has her own house and family and all that. So I thought, well, it only makes sense. My dad is still upstairs and I'd like to be closer to him. I can't pay the rent anymore in Jersey City with just one income. I think we should move to Fort Lee, you know? And my husband was like, well, I guess so. I guess, I guess that's what we're doing, you know? And it was really the best decision we ever made. The house is much larger than what we lived in Jersey City. We were outgrowing that space, it felt safe. It felt like a safe move, we are leaving chaos. I mean, we're all in chaos. Yeah. But for some reason, when you're in a city and things are closed and it, it just seems like everybody's right there and it just seems like a safer move to move to this suburb, it's not really a suburb, it's kind of, you know, it's very much metropolitan. Fort Lee is the land of the George Washington Bridge. It's traffic and it's, it is a densely populated borough. That's what they call it, but it's also more to
Nat Kalbach: you, right. Because you grew up there and
Andrea McKenna: I grew up here, so I, yeah. And the Palisades are right across the way from me and it's, you know, it's a beautiful thing to have that there and I love it here. Yeah. So it felt really good to be here. And we moved during JC Art & Studio Tour weekend. Wow. October 1st, 2020. We moved during JC Art & Studio Tour weekend, and I remember having to come back and doing the virtual tour of the JC Art & Studio Tour show. Yeah. So, wow.
Nat Kalbach: Doesn't that feel like crazy? I want to ask you two questions about this, what you mentioned. We were talking about your studio in Jersey City. So how does your studio look like now in your place?
Andrea McKenna: It is a 12 by 12 bedroom.
Nat Kalbach: Yeah.
Andrea McKenna: Yeah. Actually my aunt's bedroom where she passed away in, I felt turning that space into something creative as opposed to have it be my bedroom. She was a very inspiring person in my life, she was a city dweller and she was very cultured and traveled all over the world and worked in New York and brought me to New York on my first, you know, showed me the way of New York. Mm-hmm. It was very encouraging going to art school and all of that stuff, so. Her bedroom is now my studio. It is, it is a better situation than Jersey City because in Jersey City I painted in my bedroom in this sort of peaked roof room, which, I couldn't even really stand up in certain parts of it. And the garage wasn't insulated so it was very limited time there. And when I did really large painting, I had to move my couch in the living room and use the wall there, which was kind of chaotic. You know, Joe would be like, what are you doing now? It's like the couch, all the furniture. We moved away from the wall and I'd be like, I'd have paintings there. Space was always an issue for me, especially because I do paint large and I love to
Nat Kalbach: paint much.
Andrea McKenna: Yeah. And people are like, why don't you paint smaller? It's like, because that's not who I am, what I'm doing.
Nat Kalbach: Yeah,
Andrea McKenna: exactly. I can, I have smaller paintings, but I need to paint big, you know? Yeah.
Nat Kalbach: That's an interesting thing about doing bigger work and then time constraints. I think every artist that lives in an urban area has to deal with it, right? Like, that's just what it is. Unless you shell out more money. But then maybe you don't have that, or you also are like, I want to be at home. Like you are working already outside of your home and you have a commute and everything. When you are home, you want to be home.
Andrea McKenna: Yeah. And I'm lucky that I do have a flexible schedule with Art House. I don't have to be there every day. And having a studio outside of the home isn't financially feasible for me. Right. But it's also an inconvenience, you know, I realize that it's like driving, you know, it takes time to get your mindset into, you know, getting to the studio. Driving to the studio. If you're in traffic, that's the worst thing. And then you get to the studio, then you have to settle in, and by the time you get really going, you have to go back home, I have a life here. I have things that I have to take care of. So it's like, it's just better if I have it all in one spot.
Nat Kalbach: So besides that, of course there was a lot of things that happened that informed your artwork in terms of your feelings and grief. Is there anything that you were taking that maybe Jersey City taught you, that it has given you as an artist? Like you would say, that really influenced my way of making my art or thinking about my own artwork?
Andrea McKenna: Yeah. So I would say the first eight to 10 years that I lived in Jersey City, I didn't know that there was a real art community. I mean, I kind of knew there was 111 First Street was alive and pumping, and I knew about it. I had been there a couple times, but didn't have any friends in the art community yet. And because we were up in Journal Square in that area, and I was busy all the time as a decorative painter. I didn't work in Hudson County. I worked in Sussex County and all the towns west, you know, west Jersey. Mm-hmm. North Jersey, Bergen County, Essex County, all of that. So I was never here. I was never in Jersey City except at nighttime when I came home and I was exhausted and I didn't have bandwidth to go out and search for an art community. I didn't know it was there, but when I did find out that it was there, it happened naturally, you know. I discovered Art House by accident and they had JC Fridays and I was going around to JC Fridays and I met a couple of artists and I'm still friends with them today. And they introduced me to Art House. And so Art House, okay, what is Art House? And they're theater and they do JC Fridays and they do all this other stuff, which was really cool. And so I went there and I started volunteering there, helping them paint sets for their plays and
Nat Kalbach: Oh yeah,
Andrea McKenna: all this. And once in a while, and helping out with Snowball and starting to meet people, and then showing my work at LITM and other cafes in the area, or the smaller galleries. And the community was so welcoming and, you know, I felt really connected to them. I mean, felt connected to the people that I met, and I felt really comfortable sharing my work. And because, my work was sort of, well, at the time it wasn't really embedded in grief yet, because none of that stuff had happened at the time. So it was like, you know, I was talking about the evolution of my work. Mm-hmm.
Nat Kalbach: My
Andrea McKenna: work was a little different back then. It was still in sort of that sort of dark nature, but it wasn't really rooted yet. But I felt really comfortable around all of these people. They were sharing their work with me and I was sharing my work with them. And we would go to the openings and we would talk and I would meet more people. It's like learning about a new family. Mm-hmm. You know, it was like having another family. I'm still friends with some of these people today. You know, so many people have moved in and out of Jersey City over the years, but it was really nice. It was really nice to have that. So I guess what it did for me as an artist was make me comfortable showing work because, you know, everyone was really kind and yeah. You know, they were going to critique. It was, you know, they would never bash or
Both: say
Andrea McKenna: that they didn't like it. It was, you know, it was critiquing in the best way and it was nice. It was really nice to have that. So it made me want to do more work and show more and get to know everybody and then, you know, things happen. And then I ended up having my own gallery. Yeah. And, you know, and doing that. And that was great because I met more people and met more artists and became more connected to them and the community. And then for Art House, becoming the gallery director there, becoming more connected to more artists, you know? And so when
Nat Kalbach: you had your gallery right, Raven Gallery, how was that like, besides the artist community, how did you feel like that being set in the community? Where it was in the neighborhood? Was near White Eagle Hall.
Andrea McKenna: Yes. It was on Newark Avenue. So my friend Javiera and I, we did a popup market.
Nat Kalbach: Mm-hmm.
Andrea McKenna: A couple years prior. We did three pop-up markets in this gallery space, a few blocks away. And then we rented this small space, and we were there for three and a half years. So it was March 2014 to September of 2017. And we were there. It was great to show as many artists as we can. Everything was a handmade artisan thing, you know, jewelry, painted furniture, sculpture, t-shirts, dolls, publications, all kinds of things. And art, wall art. We were kind of the first in that, on that block. The store, Love Locked, that's now on Grove, they were also, they were there two doors down from us and there was another little shop next to us. Don't ask me the names, I cannot remember anything anymore. Yeah. Like, I don't know. But there were artisans, but we were a traditional gallery and a boutique. So we were both in one and, yeah, fullest space possible. I mean, it was a 10 by 60. It was kind of crazy. But it was really great. I wish we could have stayed there longer, but the rent kept going up and up and up. And since we were not open every day, we were only open on the weekends. And Javi had her job and I had my job. We weren't going to leave those jobs for this because we didn't, it wasn't like we sold artwork all the time. It wasn't like it made a lot of money, but we only thought it was going to be for a year anyway. We did it for fun. We thought, let's just do this for, as an experiment. Let's just do this so that we can say we did it, right. We always wanted to have, she always wanted to have a boutique, and I always wanted to have a gallery of my own. Oh, cool. So it was kind of like, let's just do this. We'll do it for one year so that we can say we did it. We'll actually make it a business. We'll do the whole thing. All of it. We had the email and the Instagram and the website. We had the whole thing going on, and after a year it was like, okay, let's do it another year. We can do it another year. We made some money, we can pay the rent. It's not a problem. We'll do it another year. And then the second year, it was fantastic. And we did well and the third year was a little tough because the rent started to really creep up. And it was a little tough to get through that third year, but we did, and we had a big celebration of third year. We couldn't believe we did it for three years and then six months later it really sort of started to wear on me because my business was not secure, you know? Yeah. I was my own boss and I was decorative painting, so it was like, I never knew where my next job was coming from and, you know, and sometimes it was very feast or famine, right?
Nat Kalbach: Yeah.
Andrea McKenna: Going through a little bit of a famine and I just didn't think I could hold up my end of the bargain. It was a heartbreaking decision to say goodbye to it, but we had to.
Nat Kalbach: We sometimes also forget, like even if it's run by artists, there's so much that is connected with it, like rent and
Andrea McKenna: Oh yeah. You have to eat something and you have to like utilities
Nat Kalbach: and Yeah, I mean it's exactly, it's a lot. It's a lot. And just, you know, the cost of putting on shows and stuff like that. Exactly. A lot of work and it's money and I mean, we enjoyed every second of it. I mean, it was really some of the best times of my whole life was having that gallery with her. I'm so glad we did it. I mean, I'll never forget it, the rest of my life, I still have the sign, I have the 10-foot sign that was, it's in my garage. I still have that sign.
Nat Kalbach: Aww.
Andrea McKenna: It's, I'll never forget, it was really the most amazing thing that I could have done. And doing it with her was just, it was a dream come true. But, you know, we just, we had to, I didn't want her to, you know, I would never want her to hold up my end and we let it go and I miss it. I still wish I had it, but not without her.
Nat Kalbach: It's wonderful that you two had the time together. And also, you also touched on something else where you said that you were doing some set design. Irene mentioned you and Javiera as being mentors and teachers when she was at
Andrea McKenna: St. Peter's.
Nat Kalbach: St. Peters, and she said, right,
Andrea McKenna: She interned with us. She was our intern for a little bit at the Raven. And then it ended up that I was asked to do set design for one of the directors that was at Art House for a while, and then he did work at St. Peter's. So I worked with Irene on, I think I did three plays at St. Peter's on the set, and she was there, so I got to know her and then here she is, she's now my gallery assistant. Yeah, she's amazing. Really great.
Nat Kalbach: How did that feel for you, like, to be involved at the university? Like, was that fun to show young people how to do that?
Andrea McKenna: Yeah, so I designed the sets with the director, Mason Beggs. It was a great learning experience for them, I think because they got to know what it was like to design a set and work on a play and all of that. I mean, they learned everything, you know, not just being the actors, but they learned the whole thing. It was fun to work there. I loved the sets that I did for those plays.
Nat Kalbach: It's very mind blowing for me that when I think about painting on furniture, painting on canvas, even though if it's large scale and then doing set design, you have all these skills like to just like spatially,
Andrea McKenna: something that people don't, well, not that they need to know because I'm not famous or anything like that, but I started out as an intern for set design at the Shakespeare Theater at Drew University for a summer. So I interned as sort of a set designer apprentice because I thought that that's what I was going to do when I was trying to find a creative career. I went to school for illustration, but I just didn't want to be an illustrator. I really wanted to be a fine artist. You know, things happen and I'm looking for a career in the arts where I can go to work every day and do something creative. And set design was a possibility because I did work for Lincoln Center at Fordham University in New York. I worked on a set there. The way that that happened was my husband was an actor, so he was a stage actor and then a film actor. And I got to meet a lot of people in that world. And so they knew I was an artist and one thing led to another, you know, would you want to work on a set? Okay. Did that. Then I ended up at the Shakespeare Theater and did that, and then I was thinking like, you know, maybe I'll do set design, you know, maybe I'm going to do that. And then I just kind of learned that you had to really work for very little money for a long time before you can actually get anywhere. And I was at the age where I was like, you know, I need, I have bills to pay, I have bills to pay. I really got, I can't, I can't go off on a traveling show and make like $75 a week. You know, like that just wasn't going to cut it. So I left that world. And then I got into decorative painting. So yeah, it's like so many, I feel like I have nine lives. I feel like I had 10 lives, but they all
Nat Kalbach: come together, right? They do. They all come together. Like when I look at your, you learned and you everything. Yeah. Right. Like you did this wonderful collaborative piece, which I unfortunately missed and I hope you do it again with
Andrea McKenna: Megan Woods. Yes. Yeah. Coming up in November at Art House. So the, yeah. My latest sort of installation project, an amazing piece called Arboreal Soul and Megan Woods, who is an amazing dancer choreographer in Jersey City. I've known her for many years because she also worked as a choreographer with Mason Beggs for St. Peter's. So I met her way back and also for Art House. This was a long time ago. And she approached me when she received a grant to do this project that she had been working on in her head for a while, and it has to do with grief because she lost her best friend. And I lost my best friend and she approached me and said, I want to do this project that sort of revolves around grief, but also the forest, also the trees, you know, hence the term Arboreal Soul. And so we worked on it for about a year and then presented it at Grace Church. And it's a beautiful piece where she choreographed, it's about 50 minutes long and it's movement that to me resembles the five stages of grief. And she does it so beautifully and so effectively that it just makes you really become quiet in yourself while you're watching her, and you really feel what she's feeling and you know what she's doing. And you know, because at first it starts out really slow. Mm-hmm. But then you see what's happening and you're like, oh my gosh, you know, I'm feeling this. And the way that my work is involved is I don't want to give it all away for people. Mm-hmm. Who haven't seen it because we're going to do it at Art House for two days. It's November 15th and 16th. If anyone hasn't seen it and wants to see it, they should because it's really a beautiful piece. Yeah, I'm excited to do it again. You know, I didn't think we'd get to do it a second time. And Art House is a completely different space than Grace Church. So with Grace Church, we created this sort of world, but we had the church as the backdrop. So everything that the church, you know, the stained glass windows and the arches and everything, and it all worked perfectly. But here with your artwork, right? Yeah. Here is a black box theater. So it's a completely different space. So now, instead of trying to fit what we did at Grace Church into Art House, we're working with what that theater looks like and trying to create, it's almost like creating it in a different way. Mm-hmm. For this space.
Nat Kalbach: Wow. Are you
Andrea McKenna: making new artwork then for the space? Um, it's going to be the same work that I had at Grace Church, but there might be, I might introduce a few. Switch out a few. I had eight works, so a couple of them might leave and a couple of new ones might come in. So, you know, we'll see what happens there.
Nat Kalbach: I cannot wait to see it. I was really mad that I couldn't go. I love, I can't wait. So I will be there. Yeah.
Andrea McKenna: It's a beautiful piece. It's really, she's an amazing artist.
Nat Kalbach: So you mentioned of course, and a lot of people know you also working at Art House as the art director. How do you navigate being both artist and gallery director? What does each role teach the other because when you are the artist, like, and I don't mean like necessarily for Art House, you also were a gallery director of your own gallery. Mm-hmm. But now you're like both people. Right? Like how does that change or how has that changed some of your views? Or what did you learn from that?
Andrea McKenna: Yeah, I have several personalities. I have the artist, I have the curator, I have the wife. And I also call myself the house manager because I sort of take care of everything in the house here. I feel like a lot of things are happening at once and being an artist and a curator is hard. Because, and because I give a lot of attention to what I'm doing in the gallery when I'm putting a show together. And when I'm curating a group show, I put a lot of time into picking those artists or inviting them and trying to get work that I want to put together to make the show what it is. And a solo show, same thing. I'm working with the artist to put in their best work there and it takes a lot of time. A lot of artists don't realize if they've never curated an art show before. Mm-hmm. It takes a lot of time to really put together something special that you want to present to the world through this artist, and the hard part is that I want to do it for myself all the time. All the things that I work with them on, I am wanting to do for myself. And it's just about time management. That's really all it is. And I'm very bad at it. I'm very bad at time management. I should have a schedule. People are like, oh, you should put it in your schedule. This is when you're going into your studio. This is when you're doing this, this is when you, it's so easy to say all of that, but when you have all these other things that happen in life, get thrown at you and you know, you're trying to put together an art show and then you're trying to do your own work, it does get a little challenging to focus on one thing. And you know, I just tend to focus on the curation first because that's my job. That's what I'm getting paid to do, so I need to focus on that first. So my work always takes a back seat and it's my fault, it's my problem. It's something that I am constantly trying to work on, but they do feed into each other. They help each other out because I understand what an artist is going through, you know, when they're putting a show together. I understand the fears and the anxieties they have about presenting work and about talking about their work at the artist talks. And I understand the rejection that one may receive, you know, from not getting into a show. Mm-hmm. And I understand the acceptance and I understand, and when they're unsure about how to put their work together or how to wire a piece or how to do this or that, it's like, I understand all of that and I can help them. It is an advantage to being an artist because you can really have empathy for what they're going through and all the challenges that they face as an artist. So I do feel that I bring something unique to the table where I'm not just somebody who curates and doesn't have an insight to what the world of being an artist is. We're a unique breed artists, we have a life whether it's a job or it's a home life, it's kids or pets or whatever you're dealing with, but always in your mind, and I think a lot of artists have this, always in your mind is what you want to create next.
Nat Kalbach: Yep.
Andrea McKenna: It's the thing that you want to do. Because I'm always thinking about it. It is a part of my brain that always has a painting up in one window and the rest of my life is going on, but I'm always thinking about that painting I'm working on, or the painting I want to work on, how I'm going to present it and da da da. So it's kind of. It's a good thing. I feel like Art House has an advantage having me as their gallery director because I live in both worlds and I've been a curator before. Right,
Nat Kalbach: exactly. I
Andrea McKenna: had, I not only had the Raven, but I also curated a couple of art festivals in Hoboken. Mm-hmm. And I've curated other cafes and I've curated things before this. I've been doing it since 2011, so I know what it takes to put together a good art show. I feel confident in that. I know how to hang art. I know how to present it. I'll always question my own work, but as a curator, I know what I'm doing. I really believe that. And I think the proof is in the pudding because I think that at Art House I've put together some really great shows over the last few years, and I'm very proud of that. I'm very proud of it because what brings me joy is taking an artist that I've either known or don't know so well, but their work is so good. And then being able to present it in that space that we have now, which is a fantastic space. Being able to put it in there and just watching them grow from being there. Mm-hmm. And from learning how to, you know, how it all is and getting the experience of the audience and who comes to see it and the talk. And it's such a wonderful feeling. It's a great feeling to be able to help, to help someone do that. Because I've had good experiences. Right.
Nat Kalbach: You have that empathy because you have been in that shoe, like in those shoes. Yeah. At some point as an artist as well, right? Like before you showed your first art and, and there's so many questions like how do you do that? How, where does it go from there? So I can see that. That was amazing. So Andrea, my signature question. If you could spend an afternoon with anyone from either Jersey City or Fort Lee, from the past, or someone who moved between those spaces like you have, you know. Mm-hmm. Who would it be? Which corner would you choose as your meeting spot, and what one question would you ask them?
Andrea McKenna: So when you told me about this, I was really stumped, but then it was like a light bulb that went off in my head because I can't believe I remember this person, but there was a woman that lived two doors down from us in Jersey City. She was in her eighties. She has long passed away. But when we first moved there, her name was Helen, and I don't know her last name, but my landlady, who I was, who I'm very close with, you know, told me that she's like, oh, Helen, we nicknamed Helen the Jersey Journal, the JJ. And the reason is because Helen knew everything that was going on in the neighborhood, not just Jersey City, but the neighborhood. She knew everybody on the street from the top of the block to the bottom. She knew who everybody was. And we learned shortly after we moved there that she was friends with my husband's mother. She went to high school with my mother-in-law and she gave us a picture of her and my mother-in-law and her friends in like, you know, the sweater with the letter, the letter sweaters and the skirt, little outfits that you wear at school. And it was like a cheerleader's outfit. I think they were cheerleaders. And I was like, oh my God. Because we were talking one day and we found, we figured out that she knew Joe's mom because Joe's parents were from Jersey City. Lived there for many, many years in Greenville. And they got married in St. Al's Church, St. Aloysius Church on the west side. And Helen was friends with her. And it was just sort of like this kind of like, you know, Twilight Zone moment. We moved to this block in Jersey City and my husband, you know, didn't grow up there. He grew up in a different town, but his parents grew up there and he just lived there because he worked in New York and whatever. It was easy commute. And then we meet this woman, Helen, and she just, she had stories about everybody in the neighborhood. So like, if you wanted to know something about somebody that lived there, she could tell you. And if something, if some drama happened with somebody, you know, as it often does, she knew about it. And she was just the sweetest woman and she passed away a few years after we moved on the street. So I didn't really get to talk to her, but there were many times when I wanted to have conversations with her. But being the busy people that we are, we don't take the time to knock on someone's door and say, Hey, you know, do you need anything? And by the way, I'd love to chat with you about, you know, what you know about Jersey City because she lived in that house. Oh, this is another thing. The house that she lived in, she was born in.
Nat Kalbach: Oh my God.
Andrea McKenna: Yeah. There was a little, it was a little house, two doors from us and just this little house and a little grass yard in front with a little fence. And we learned that she was born there and grew up there and basically died there. Wow. And to me, it's just amazing because everybody I knew doesn't live in the house that they grew up in, much less were born in, you know. I know that I moved back here. I never thought that I would, but that's, you know, another story, but it, yeah, it was really interesting to me. And so I wish that I could speak to her and I wish I could speak to her right on the corner where we lived, which is Vroom Street and Bergen. And what I would ask her is just, you know, what was your life like here? I wanted to know what her life was like on that street, you know, because that street was a very diverse street. It was like the United Nations on that street and I loved it. I loved meeting all of these different people from all over the globe. You know, Jersey City is so populated with diverse people. I love it. It's just one of the charms about Jersey City that you learn so much about other cultures. That's why the city is so special. That's why I loved it.
Nat Kalbach: That's very cool. Helen,
Andrea McKenna: I wanted to know more about my mother-in-law, you know?
Nat Kalbach: Right. How
Andrea McKenna: was, oh, yeah. You know, because. Yeah. I mean, as a teenager, yeah. And the school they went to and what did you guys do? And you're like, what was, you know, where did you party? Yeah. Where'd you party? I think in the house we lived in, actually, from what I was told, yeah.
Nat Kalbach: That was so delightful. I loved this so much. This was such a great conversation. You're welcome. Thank you, and I hope I see you soon. Oh, you will. Totally. Thank you so much.
Nat Kalbach : That was my conversation with Andrea McKenna. You can see Andrea's work on her website, www.andreamckenna.com, and I will link it up in the show notes. And if you're in the area, please mark your calendar for November 15th and 16th to experience Arboreal Soul, her collaboration with choreographer Megan Woods at Art House. I will also link this up in the show notes. Next week, I will post an article inspired by my conversation with Andrea on my Substack. Subscribe if you want to dig deeper into the stories that unfold through my guests. And on another note, Andrea mentioned Helen, the "Jersey Journal," that neighbor who knew everyone's stories on Vroom Street. I love that Andrea mentions that she wishes she could have spent more time learning Helen's stories about the neighborhood. It's a reminder that those conversations with our elderly neighbors, the ones who've seen decades of change, are precious. So if you have one in your neighborhood and you want to learn more about your neighborhood, go and talk to them. Don't wait.
My next guest is Duquann Sweeney, a photographer who truly cares and puts love and the call for all of us to use our imagination into his wonderful work. Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Brian Benninghoff, Charlie Siegler and Pat Van Dyke. You can find more of my work and my artwork inspired by stories and histories at natkalbach.com and on Substack. Until next time, keep noticing the stories on your sidewalk.
