About Altea Narici:

Narici is a traveling artist and performer, exploring topics of ecology and conservation through music, art and community engagement projects. She composes combining her cello and voice and collaborates with marine mammal scientists. She was a Sitka resident in 2020, engaging with the local community through concerts and workshops.

Altea Narici shares this:

Welcome to my traveling studio, current position: Rome.

When in creative mode, I like a flexible environment, moving around different places in the house or garden, or rearranging elements in my room depending on what I am working on. I tend to follow seasons, being quite active creatively in spring and more in a "performer mode" in summer - I love giving outdoor concerts.

When the wish to create comes, I approach it softly and quickly, before too much thinking gets in the way. "Keeping my nose on the joy trail" as Buffy Sainte-Marie says, tracking that feel of playful pleasure in the work (and my surname means nostrils, which is encouraging). When out of the studio mode, being in nature -exploring, climbing, swimming, staring at the ocean and sky, being among trees -is my way to recharge, and find connection and inspiration. I also like stories of visionaries such as Thor Heyerdahl, Jane Goodall, Anne Innis Dagg, the Pixar's founders, and reading the wonderful blog by Terri Windling "Myth and Moor".

I love collaborating with explorers of different fields, as it always gives new life and momentum to my creative work. In 2020, I joined marine mammal scientists in the field, as a research assistant intern at sea.

I am currently working on writings and illustrations for a 2021 Christmas project about wildlife conservation: an advent calendar for children made of letters from different wild animals, with four conservation associations contributing. This is an exciting process, and my first time in the illustrator and producer role.

I will also record my first CD of original pieces for cello and voice soon. You will find one of them in the video (linked below) where I performed close to Sitka in 2020 for the project "Heron's Tunes": a research on how performative art can become a space for reflection and sharing about our relationship with the natural world, involving local communities.

Traveling is crucial for me, as ideas often come while on the go. So, I'm excited to come back to North America in 2022 and resume my project "New Worlds: an artistic journey" across the United States, Mexico and Canada. I am getting ready by learning Spanish, and Hawaiian and dreaming of traveling towards the South Pacific afterwards. During my residency at Sitka, I realized how much I love sharing what I do with small local communities, and I can't wait to dive into that process again. A presto!