Brooklyn restaurant Be Pasta is launching the first edition of their brand new Postcard Project, an initiative celebrating the coming together of food, art and community.
Starting this month, patrons of the Park Slope eatery will receive a pasta-inspired postcard accompanying the checks at the end of their meal. These postcards are a part of monthly series, and are all made by local, student artists.
The initiative was created by Be Pasta owners — husband-and-wife duo Monia Solighetto and Alessandro Trezza, along with partner Daniele Tassi — as a way to celebrate pasta and its connection with art.
For Solighetto, the creation of art and food share much overlap.
“It feels natural for me to see a kind of blank canvas with some ingredients on top, and instead of coloring and drawing, you’re cooking,” Solighetto said. “In a way, it’s the same action. [You] use your hands, you create, you try, you like, you don’t like, you make again. There is so much affinity between the two worlds.”
The idea to collaborate with student artists in particular came from Solighetto’s desire to uplift handmade, local art.
“The idea was to [collaborate] with local artists, especially young people, because I think it’s nice to be surrounded by young people, but it’s also nice to give them a way to express themselves,” Solighetto said. “In this time where everything is so uncertain with what is going on with artificial intelligence, you don’t know what your next job is… I think that manual things like drawing and cooking deserve to be protected.”
Be Pasta first posted an open call for the project in April of this year, inviting student artists to submit samples of their work and a moodboard. The selected artists were then asked to create a postcard based on one simple prompt: pasta and its ingredients.
“Each of them have their personal and different vision, and that’s why it’s nice, all the postcards will be different,” Solighetto said. “When you hire a graphic [designer] you give your vision and they work on what you give them. In this case, I didn’t want that.”
Anna Gorostiaga (@paper.cut.s on Instagram), currently pursuing her masters in illustration at FIT, is the artist behind the first postcard of the series. For Gorostiaga, her inspiration stemmed from a common human experience.
“My first thought was a kid eating spaghetti,” Gorostiaga said. “I feel like that’s the classic image, and it’s very relatable and human. Especially as an adult, I feel like people can relate to that image as well, because it’s a very, very fun experience to just be a little messy.”
Gorostiaga applied to be a part of the Postcard Project after coming across the open call on Instagram. After her submission was accepted, she was invited to design a postcard for the series.
“I’ve never done any sort of collaboration with a business before, so I thought that was really exciting,” Gorostiaga said. “[This was] a very cool opportunity to do something that I was not super familiar with, especially related to food. That’s something I never really had thought about.”
The June postcard, illustrated by Anna Gorostiaga (left), is pictured alongside the July postcard, illustrated by Sofiia Sichkar (right).Photo by Barbara Vasquez
When asked what opportunities such as the Postcard Project could mean for local artists, Gorostiaga echoed Solighetto’s emphasis on “personal touch.”
“I do really appreciate, especially living in the digital age, people really actually wanting to go the extra mile to have more of a personal touch, and also getting to know local people, local artists,” Gorostiaga said. “I think that’s really important. Especially for student artists, getting an opportunity like that is kind of a sigh of relief. It’s like, ‘oh, people actually do want us’, which is really refreshing and exciting, especially again in a world where you really don’t have to do that.”
Solighetto and her husband own several traditional Italian restaurants across the city, including Terre, just down the street from Be Pasta. While equally as authentic as the others, Be Pasta became the site of the Postcard Project due to its unique emphasis on the arts. Outside of the Postcard Project, Be Pasta acts as an exhibition space for local artists: currently on display are paintings by New York painter Monica Mangano.
Emphasizing beauty and art in different forms is what Solighetto hopes Be Pasta will be known for.
“I hope that in the long term, Be Pasta would be seen as a place where there is not just food, but there is culture,” Solighetto said. “Culture is the umbrella of everything. Under the umbrella of culture, there is food, there’s creativity, there is music, there is poetry. There is beauty.”
Be Pasta will continue its Postcard Project for 12 months, with 12 unique postcards available for collection. Customers who complete the full collection will receive a complimentary dinner from the owners. Artists interested in participating can email info@bepastany.com.