BIO
Nita balances an interdisciplinary life as an artist, teacher, entrepreneur and mother. She is Professor in the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. As a teacher, she is committed to facilitating students towards realizing their intellectual and creative potential through interdisciplinary practice. While at MassArt, she has designed and taught several signature courses; Art, Life and Money, Event Planning and Production, and Art and Science Immersive Media. Please read “Revisiting the Sandbox” (6.9 MB .pdf) a monograph she wrote about the history and pedagogy of the Studio for Interrelated Media at MassArt.
Nita’s artwork explores natural phenomena, cognition, and emerging technologies. She has presented her work at Boston Museum of Science, MIT’s Media Lab, Cambridge River Arts Festival, Tufts University, Mills College, Harvard University, in Wales, Beijing, and Milan, as well as online. She is included in Stephen Wilson’s book, Information Arts (MIT Press, 2001). Nita was a member of the Nature and Inquiry artist group from 1991 – 2012. With this group, she directed the award-winning Invisible Ideas – a GPS-enabled audience participation event premiering at the Copley Society of art in conjunction with Boston Cyberarts Festival 2003. She founded the Regali Artist Residency in Sicily in 2014. Pietre Preziose is a gifting performance, website, photo series, and book that developed during the years 2008-2011. Her audio work, Stations of a Commute, was featured in the Conflux Arts Festival in NYC in 2006.
Previously, she developed and taught two signature courses at Harvard University for several years – Creative New Media and the Web and Applied Innovation in Wireless Computing. She has also taught at Endicott College, Greenfield Community College, as well as the Pennsylvania’s Governor’s School of Excellence in Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She has taught at Endicott College, Greenfield Community College, Carnegie Mellon University, as well as in various K-12 environments in MetroBoston. She was a founding member of the first Boston Cyberarts Festival‘s Youth committee which pioneered the Festival’s Faces of Tomorrow online portrait gallery for youth in 1999.
Nita’s entrepreneurial activities include co-founding SmartWorlds, a software company developing applications for mobile devices. In addition to working in high tech, Nita and her husband, Giuseppe Taibi, import the Taibi family’s Sicilian Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Olio Taibi, into the United States – get yours now by ordering securely online at oliotaibi.com!!
As a Jacob K. Javits Fellow, 1994-97, Nita received a Ed.M, Harvard Graduate School of Education and a M.F.A., Tufts University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, combining art, science and education. She earned a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art.
Nita is currently Massachusetts College of Art and Design All University Committee Chair and Studio for Interrelated Media Eventworks Festival and Godine Family Gallery Faculty Advisor.
She lives in Lexington, MA, with her husband, Giuseppe and their two daughters, Ella Francesca and Gaia Valentina.
“For me, teaching is a creative practice, and artform, and a life calling. Teaching is actually learning in disguise.”