Yuval Buchshtab started woodworking from a young age, making guitars by hand under the guidance of his older brother. Decades later, his hopeful works are shaping him.

Words by Odelia Glausiusz
Photos by Dan Perez

 

Yuval Buchshtab grew up surrounded by nature in Kibbutz Nirim, to a long line of agriculturists sowing the land. His connection to the natural world runs through his veins - although he’s channeled it through a parallel path; his self-built woodworking business has him carving handmade products from fresh wood he collects locally. Each piece is unique and crafted according to the natural shape of the wood he finds. “Before I start working, I have a dialogue with the material to figure out what object it will become.” This lends an element of spontaneity to his pieces, as well as showcasing the unique properties of the wood, rendering the material itself a mode of expression. When designing objects for people’s homes, it also brings the outside in. “It’s my goal for people to have something from their natural surroundings with them at home.”

It was Yuval’s older brother Yagev who first sparked his interest in woodwork. Yagev, seven years older than him, is a musician, and Yuval would often hang out with him in his “cool” room in the kibbutz’s youth quarter, with its guitars, coffee machine and bottles of whisky. Yagev used to fix electric guitars, and one day Yuval saw a guitar taken apart on his desk. “I realized that it was basically just a piece of wood with holes in it to connect the parts. I asked him whether if I made a piece of wood like that with holes in it, if he could fix it into a guitar. He said sure, no problem. That’s when my journey really started.”

From then until the end of high school, Yuval made guitars with his brother. He conducted his own research and found online forums that told him what type of wood he’d need. By the end of high school, he’d perfected this niche section of carpentry. He also started collecting bits of wood during hikes and would whittle away at them under his desk in school. As a very shy kid, finding something he was really good at helped strengthen Yuval’s confidence, and woodwork became an important part of his personality.

Having taught himself for so long, arriving at the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design was like landing in a dream world for Yuval. He had all the teachers, tools and materials at his disposal that he could ask for. “I was probably one of the students who used the equipment the most. I spent a lot of time in that workshop.” University also gave him a more conceptual framework from which to approach his projects, and his work started taking on more abstract, experimental forms. 
As time went on, he became increasingly interested in researching local Israeli materials. He wanted to feel like his work belonged to him, that he was not just copying methods from countries with a longer tradition of woodworking. Five years ago, he decided that he would no longer buy imported wood. “That decision really changed the style of my work,” Yuval explains. “Finding the right material was the best way to get to something authentically Israeli.” He says Israeli rather than local, because in the same way that Israel is comprised of a multi-cultural population with a vibrant collection of cultures and traditions, its trees, too, come from around the world – from Australia, Europe, Africa and South America. An Israeli tree then, is not a local tree that’s been here for a thousand years, but a tree that grew on Israeli soil. In the same way that Israeli cuisine is non-homogenous, comprised of a collection of traditions from different countries, the beauty of Israeli material is its diversity.

 

 

Yuval’s yearning for the natural environment of his youth is powerfully expressed in his recent series of laser prints on wood and paper that show a birds-eye view of the burnt fields of Nirim. Located in the north-western Negev, close to the Gaza border, Nirim was attacked on October 7th by Hamas terrorists. Yuval’s older brother, Yagev, and his wife Rimon, were kidnapped by Hamas from their home in the kibbutz. While Rimon was returned to Israel after fifty-three days in captivity, Yagev, at the time of writing, is still being held captive in Gaza. The kibbutz has become a closed-off military zone, so Yuval took to looking longingly at his childhood home from above with Google Maps. “You look at it and you can’t help but think of all the good memories, and at the same time what happened on that day for whoever was there. These prints represent the ambivalence between the dual emotions of pain and nostalgia.” Although using a laser is generally a very precise method, for this series Yuval reprogrammed the machine to render the lines purposefully blurred, figuratively expressing that unresolved, constant tug between pain and nostalgia. Dedicated to Yagev, whose name means “field” in Hebrew, the first thing that Yuval drew were the north-western fields of the kibbutz, the path taken by the terrorists who took hostage Yagev and Rimon into Khan Younis.

Yuval’s other recent project, ‘Holes’, is a series of eerie yet powerful sculptures, made from local grevillea robusta wood and burnt Jerusalem pine from Kibbutz Nirim. Each piece is unique, the wood flowing into abstract shapes, with holes carved through at random. Post October 7th, the whole country was hurting, yet it was difficult for Yuval to express that pain outwardly. “I decided to express it in a clearer way through my work.” He chose not to shy away from making the pieces morbid. “We’re still in a state of waiting, we don’t know how this will end, if it will end.” The holes are a physical expression of the very real gaping hole in their lives. “Often I have a question, or want Yagev’s advice on something. The I remember he’s not here.” Yet the arms of each sculpture reach up into the sky, as though appealing to the heavens. Whilst they represent loss, fear, pain and destruction, the shapes are also representative of “love, connection, longing and hope”. Even if peppered with holes, the shapes remain cohesive, still standing tall. Yuval explains, “we feel, and have felt since the beginning of the war that the whole country is embracing us. It was important to me to make something that others in similar circumstances can look at and relate to.”

After October 7th, Yuval was thrust into an incomprehensible situation. He manages to lose himself in working on orders from private customers, including chefs commissioning unique pieces for their restaurants. And besides from raising money for the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Yuval’s exhibitions have helped both him as an artist, and his viewers, by opening a calm, soft space in which to address what’s happened. “It’s my work that gives me a reason to wake up in the morning.”