"What moves me is the pleasure of creation."

Gabriel Valadares was born in Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais. At the age of 25, he dedicated himself to jewelry design. "After discovering silver, I began to explore other materials in my creations, like recycled wood, seeds, titanium and niobium, a lustrous gray metal. From the time I was a child, I had a certain fascination with forms and textures.

"Although the time isn't clear in my memory, the images are – my grandfather preparing his joinery tools. An aunt with beautiful jewels in her lap... They told me that when I was very young, I was found with a penknife sculpting a broomstick. I began a number of courses, but dropped out of them, until I decided on jewelry. I studied it in the Mineira School of Jewelry in the 1980s, and later returned as teacher.

"What moves me is the pleasure of creation. I really enjoy trying different techniques and observing as my control of them unfolds in my collections. As the work develops, I see much more than my own hand in my designs. The pleasure of creation is quite similar to the look in a person's face when they are enchanted with an object.

"In Novica, I found a sense of identification because there, too, I see their pleasure in sharing this enchantment with others."