Artist + designer Elena Salmistraro joins us for this week's Friday Five, sharing a versatile meal, some of her favorite types of art + more.

Elena Salmistraro graduated from the Politecnico in Milan with a degree in Industrial Design in 2008, and the following year opened her own firm. She’s the creator of a unique and highly recognizable aesthetic, and interested in developing work that straddles the lines between illustration, design, and visual arts. To Elena, the play of shapes and volumes, materials and colors blend tradition and innovation. Among her priorities" How attention to detail and the research of shapes, in terms of anthropomorphism and primitivism, stand out. An excess of graphic symbols creates a stereoscopic image, suspending it somewhere between fantasy and reality. Elena’s projects have been included in several events, including the The New Italian Design traveling exhibition, the collective exhibition The New Aesthetic Design, at the Shanghai Biennale in 2013, and the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea. In 2017, she won the Salone del Mobile Milano Award as ?Best Emerging Designer.? In 2018, Elena was appointed Ambasciatrice of Brera Design District. The Chimera project designed for Cedit-ceramiche d’Italia won the international “Good Design Awards” in 2020. And in 2021, the Spire washbasin Elena designed for Ceramica Flaminia won the “ADI Ceramic & Bathroom Award.” She works as a designer and ar...