Andrea McKenna: Remains

What happens between the time we take our last breath to arrive at our final destination? This is the fundamental question that informs my work. For me, the grieving process is crafted into something visual. Creating imaginative answers to the questions; “is there an afterlife, and what does it look like?” I became interested in this subject at a younger age, but it wasn’t until I was deeply affected by a series of sudden losses that my work emerged with a new intention.

With this new intention came new materials that craft these in-between bodies. Those elements become part of my dialogue–texturing parts of the figure, resembling a torn body, preparing scars, enabling light to peek through, and exposing the energy. While I use physical materials, the figures are spiritual and represent their existence.

I work on burlap, layering Limestone plaster with stains and acrylics while occasionally applying metal leaf. At times, the work is burned in places as an act of letting go of what once was. The burlap becomes a layered tapestry, rich with earthy color and ash. It is attached to a simple piece of wood at the top or hung with rope to found driftwood. This gives the work an anchor. My work shifts the viewer’s viewpoint to engage in an alternative thought process and introduces them to figures, not of this world but perhaps of an “in-between” world. My works represent a spirit forming, traveling to its final destination–shedding all its earthly worries and carrying its newfound inner light.