gabriela valenzuela: July 2008

Thursday, July 3, 2008

Luxurious & environmentally conscious...

Heartwood Press

12 dozen/12 things she can’t live without...

1- Exchanging smiles every day with my husband and daughter.

2- An Ylang Ylang morning breeze.3- Swimming across the San Francisco Estuary in Langosta Beach at high tide.4- The “Incomplete Manifesto” by Bruce Mau- to remind me what is relevant in my everyday design adventure.
5- Clay deliveries from the jungle every 1st Saturday of the month.

6- A “Reform” pencil 1.5 mm and plain paper at all times.

7- petting my dog Woody.
8- A poem Leonard Cohen wrote for me with crayons on paper table cover at 1 .2. 3. Restaurant in NYC twenty + years ago.

9- Having tea on my mother original tea set by Eva Zeizel for Arabia.

10- “Rushka” tea by Marriage Freres.

11- My Photo by Helmut Newton.

12- Manchego cheese and Navarro & Correas Prosseco

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About Gabriela

Gabriela Valenzuela-Hirsch, Born in Costa Rica in 1960 in the heart of an artistic family, she attended at an early age academic and art. In 1984, she worked at Harper’s Bazaar Italia as a fashion editor. Sent to New York City that same year to be the Haute Couture N.Y. Correspondent.

In early 1986 she meet Jerry Hirsch, Fashion entrepreneur (husband to be) In love generosity came to play and she help him launch his “Go Silk” fashion collection in Milan. First, creative Director at GO SILK, then the head Designer of the company, receiving both recognition from the international fashion press and orders from such prominent retailers as Barney’s New York, Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus, Brown’s London, Collette Paris and many more. Go silk was license in 2001 to Sunnex Group Ltd.

They begin to partially move into Costa Rica, were Gabriela opened the company HEARTWOOD; an artisans coop dedicated to the manufacturing of products made out of wood. The wood came from reforestation programs.

She became a solid environmentalist in Costa Rica when she came to realize that the implementacion of the law regarding logging was scarcely and badly managed by the Costa Rican Government. Since she has become and influence in the many changes and applications of the law regarding environmental issues.

In the last five years she has solidified heartwood, which is now distributed to 200 best specialty stores worldwide. The company does private label for Calvin Klein Home,

Waterworks, Chanel, and Ives Saint Laurent to name a few. HEARTWOOD has a new consumer product line from organic farming in Costa Rica, soon to be launched at the New York Fancy Food Show.

Lives and works in Playa Langosta, Tamarindo, Costa Rica. She has been working in making government policy that Tamarindo becomes the first “Case Study” of environmental rescue in Costa Rica, under the newly created project by President Arias” Peace with Nature.

She is also creating The Tamarindo Center for the Arts and The Artisans & Heritage Museum.

Her creative goal is to inspire and instruct a new generation of young designers to create and develop innovative products that not only seduce all our senses. But are compelled to support improved eco-efficiency, designing new products that are “more from less”.

Sometimes one can’t help to ask how she does all of this. Her answer often is that she has great love for the extraordinary wealth and depth of the civilized spirit. She tries over and over again to reflect in her life in the most loving and sincere way the pinnacle of human possibility.