Tel Aviv Bids Farewell to Favorite Handpoke Artist

Florentin’s graffiti filled streets and decrepitly charming buildings continue to honor the Tel Aviv neighborhood’s merchant class roots. Here, an assortment of shops line the narrow corridors and intersect at the Levinsky market. As Florentin’s main bazaar, the market highlights the neighborhood’s artisanal character. 

Among Florentin’s delights is the abundance of tattoo parlors and artists. Mrs. Geller, otherwise known as Honeypoke on her social media, has been tattooing in Israel for nearly three years. Her relatively modest following has garnered her status in Tel Aviv’s artist circles. 

Born in Zhovity Vody, Ukraine, Geller was raised in the Russian Vologda Oblast of Cherepovets. She began tattooing in late 2017 using the traditional format of stick-and-poke or the hand poke technique.

Hand poking includes a series of dots that repeatedly puncture the skin to create an image. A tedious process, hand poke is an ancient practice dating to 3200 BCE. In hand poke’s modernity, an impressionist style emerges, and is more closely identified as micro realism. 

The 1990s counterculture movement inspired Israel’s cosmopolitan center of Tel Aviv, to become a beacon of body decorations. Oz Almog, sociologist at the University of Haifa, offers several explanations to the phenomena in his 2003 study. Almog describes the popularity of tattoos in Israeli society as reflecting the influence of Western culture on the younger generation. He considers that tattoos offer an amulet of protection for soldiers. The country’s existentialism, enhanced by war and terror attacks signify their appeal. And though Jews most commonly associated tattoos with the Holocaust, Almog asserts that Israeli youth’s distance from the Sho’ah weakens those associations. 

Geller, who is a self taught tattoo artist and oil painter, traversed Russia’s conservative attitudes and stigma toward the art. While candid about her early career mistakes, she offers mentorship courses for aspiring artists. 

“To be an artist is to experiment,” says Geller. “Once I started practicing poking I was stunned. It was exactly what I needed, this meditative process, one that I completely controlled.” 

Drawing inspiration from the works of Claude Monet, Geller’s assortment of flash designs grew her popularity. Her earlier portfolio included exclusive color work of bouquets, fruits, and marine treasures like seashells and fish. However, Geller has since deviated from her earlier style.

After spending much of the last year in an artistic angst, Geller realized that though she is proud of her color work, it is not exemplative of her preferred expression. She leans toward a more tribal style, mirroring the works of handpoke’s ancient origins.

“I realized that I, myself, would not get the tattoos that I make on others. I prefer more vibrant, black, strong, and expressive tattoos… ones that almost enhance sexuality in the body, and consider anatomy and the figure,” Geller explained.

Geller and her husband repatriated to Israel just weeks before Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine. Though the couple has laid roots in Tel Aviv, they are planning to move in the next month. Geller, superstitious of preemptive announcements, has kept the next destination a secret. She hopes to make frequent visits to Israel in the future, considering that life can always bring her back to the country.