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A piece about resilience for Shari. Beautiful ink by at .Miami.⁠
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Shari from Portland came to us with a clear sense of what she wanted to express. After a lifetime of healing and building, she had reached a place of joy, a sense of wholeness earned through years of personal and communal work.⁠
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The past two years brought new challenges. Like many, Shari was deeply shaken by the events of October 7 and the waves of antisemitism that followed. What stayed with her was the contrast. The grief of a world that suddenly felt less safe, and the strength she found in her Jewish community. She described it as living in two spheres at once, pain and joy, brokenness and connection.⁠
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For the text, she was drawn to the poem ‘Wonder’ by Tuvya Ruebner, a reflection on the quiet joy that lives within ordinary moments. Gabriel imagined the art as a circle, whole yet visibly split, with letters rising from the break and continuing upward. It is a form that honors the cracks but does not collapse into them. Instead, it grows through them.⁠
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This piece is about being grounded in who you are, about finding beauty in the everyday, and about the resilience it takes to carry both joy and sorrow in one heart. A mark of quiet strength and belonging.⁠
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Hali reached out to us as they approached their 60th birthday, wanting a verse that had stayed close to them for many years: Psalm 91:11. As a Jewish chaplain, these words were part of how they move through the world.⁠
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The verse speaks of guardianship:⁠
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כִּי מַלְאָכָיו יְצַוֶּה לָּךְ לִשְׁמָרְךָ בְּכָל דְּרָכֶיךָ⁠
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“For God will command God’s angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways.”⁠
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For Hali, this was about the unseen ways we hold one another. The often invisible presence of care that surrounds us, especially in moments of vulnerability.⁠
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From the beginning, they wanted the piece to take the form of an armband. Something that would encircle the arm like a continuous thread.⁠
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In their conversations with Gabriel, the verse began to find its rhythm within that form, carrying a subtle movement. A sense of continuity without finality, and a reminder of protection, of presence, and of the unseen forces that accompany us, and the ones we become for others along the way.⁠
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❤️

A Hebrew tattoo of Shema for Avi. Incredible ink by .⁠
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Avi from Boulder, Colorado, is a therapist and natural medicine facilitator who once lived fully inside Chabad life. ⁠
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For over a decade, Hasidus, Kabbalah, tefillin, and the Shema were his clearest language for reaching toward the divine, but over time, as his work with psychedelic medicine deepened, that same language began to shift, the clothes and outer forms starting to feel disingenuous while something truer was opening inside. ⁠
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The medicine did not pull him away from Judaism; it widened it, revealing the same Presence in the forest, in the mountains, in breath and relationship, and in the soul’s longing to reconnect with the divine within and without.⁠
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The Shema kept returning for Avi as both doorway and anchor: Hear, O Israel. At some point, the whole verse narrowed into a single word that felt like a deep well: שמע, shin, mem, ayin, listen. For Avi, these three letters carry a whole spiritual practice, listening to what is, listening to God in nature, listening to the body, and to the person sitting across from him in the therapy room. He spoke of a forest at dusk that is both listening and being listened to, of the slow intelligence of mycelium under the soil, of mountains that stay steady while the weather shifts around them, and the more he sat with it, the more he felt that שמע does not need more explanation; it already contains everything.⁠
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Gabriel imagined a piece that would treat that word as something living: שמע written in Hebrew calligraphy that stretches and branches like an underground network, the letters flowing into one another like roots or mycelium, a subtle structure beneath the surface. ⁠
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For Avi, this tattoo becomes a small, visible place on his skin that keeps inviting him back to the same practice, to listen deeply, to trust that the same Oneness he touches in prayer, in the forest, and in his work with others is always here, waiting to be heard.⁠
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A tree for Samuel. Gorgeous ink by .Tattoos at .Hysteria.Amsterdam⁠
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Samuel from Paris came to us with a verse that had become the spine of his life. Psalm 23:6 is the line he repeats when he needs to remember that the universe has his back, especially as a gay man who grew up in a world that struggled to accept him. He first met the words through music, in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, with a boy soprano carrying אך טוב וחסד ירדפוני כל ימי חיי ושבתי בבית יהוה לאורך ימים. After his mother’s death, the verse became a doorway back into spirituality, a way to feel her courage near him and to trust again that goodness and lovingkindness follow him.⁠
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As we spoke, that trust unfolded outward and inward at once: outward in the promise of goodness that accompanies him, inward in the sense of returning to the house of the Eternal that is also his inner home. His parents had prayed for a child against all odds and named him for the boy Hannah asks for in the book of Samuel, hearing in כי מה׳ שאלתיו the story of his own beginning. Another line from that story felt like a calling: ויגדל שמואל ויהוה עמו, Samuel grew and the Holy One was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. Together, these verses speak of being asked for and of learning to speak from a place of trust.⁠
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Gabriel imagined all of this as a living form along Samuel’s spine. At the base of his back the letters gather into rooted forms, strokes solid and legible, like a trunk of text that holds his weight. As the piece climbs, the writing begins to move more freely, opening into gentle curves and shifts of color, echoing both the rainbow chakras and his journey as a q***r man claiming his place in the world. Near the upper back the letters loosen into an abstract, flame like form that becomes lighter as it reaches the side of his neck, just visible above a collar. For Samuel, this tattoo is a quiet column of prayer under the skin, a reminder that he was asked for, that goodness and lovingkindness walk with him, and that his words are meant to stand.⁠
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