Chiara Lecca's Open-Air Studio in the Apennine Woods

Italian artist Chiara Lecca (born 1977 in Modigliana) has established an open-air studio in the Apennine forest near her family's farm, as part of her project Clarulecis—a "family collective" blending ecology, sustainability, conviviality, and collaboration. The studio uses natural materials like bark, leather scraps, and plants as matrices for direct printing on fabric, producing Primitive T-shirts, shawls, drapes, and small furnishings. Lecca also creates sculptures in gress (stoneware) and leather directly on trees, trunks, and branches to capture their volumes and textures. Previously, she worked in her living room while her children were young, then in a space adjacent to the family dairy. Clarulecis involves her family—her two daughters (ages 6 and 9), husband, brother, parents—and past and future family mythology. The outdoor studio operates only by daylight and in favorable weather, with a table left in the woods year-round. Lecca uses minimal tools, with branches and trunks as furniture; the worktable is made from wood supplied by ALPI, a company in her Romagna Apennine village. She values the ability to capture nature's imprints directly and adopt archaic rhythms tied to natural cycles, preserving primitive gestures like imprinting and direct printing. The studio has no walls, making it both intimate and boundless.