What is To Be of Good Pasta?

To Be of Good Pasta is the name I use for all of my personal artisic and social projects. In 2017, I started “to be of good pasta”. The name comes from a mix of many different things in my life, some of which come from my teenage years, others from my time living in Spain, and after. In Spanish, the saying “ser de buena pasta” means to be a good person, or to be good for something. I have, in my own way, tried to be a "good person" by adding positive energy to the world by creating fun ways to interact with our own surroundings and other people. It first started out as a book, but has since morphed something much greater, and the perfect platform for my creative energy.

Conversation Starters

In 2020, interactions with people decreased significantly due to Covid-19. While getting together and doing things was not as easy as it was before, I noticed that people were beginning to turn to something that can always be done in quarantine, or with someone on the other side of the world, and that is a simple conversation. Unfortunately, because of the political fighting, and clashing ideas, many of our conversations easily turned negative, especially when we are talking with or about someone whose views are different from our own. I decided to change the conversation to things that are not important, and completely unrelated to anything... just to escape for a moment. I became obsessed with simple conversation starters. And not the basic ones like, "what's your favorite color", but questions that you may have never asked yourself, like "what curse do you wish upon those who wrong you in traffic?". I created illustrations and downloadables, and my current project is creating Tarot cards that are asking the questions rather than answering.

Check out more conversation starters here

Playlist Covers

As much as I love graphic design and creating art, I've always known that I wanted to be a teacher. Fortunately, I was able to get the best of both worlds and become a high school graphic arts and web development teacher. Music has always been important to me as well, so as I was finishing college and preparing to have a classroom of my own, I began to put together "classroom friendly" spotify playlists as well as collect my favorite "no-skip" albums. I created album covers for each of my playlists to hang on the wall, and inspire students in their own work.

See some of my playlist covers here

Mail Subscription

In 2022, I decided to attempt to bring To Be of Good Pasta to a platform more tangible and interactive, and replaced Instagram with the postman! I have been sending fun surprises in the mail… Anything from treasure maps to envelopes within envelopes. There have been opportunities to interact with others through the magic of snail mail and pen pals. This whole idea started as an experiment, but I have decided to continue every year. All that I require is a small payment at the beginning of the year, which the participants soon forget they even paid. Then throughout the year, they continue to recieve surprises in their mailbox! If you're interested in subscribing, feel free to send me an email and ask about it!

Email me about subscribing!