Atone Vero doesn’t recall a single day in the last three years when she hasn’t opened her Bible.
It is not only the sacred words inside the Bible, but also its cover—a richly hued depiction of Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Mount—that draws her every day.
“It reawakened my spiritual side,” Vero, 37, said of her custom-painted Bible, which also has Matthew 28:20 engraved on the back cover. “It has become an integral part of my spiritual journey.”
In August 2023, Vero was overwhelmed by change. She and her husband had just moved out of their hometown in Dimapur in the northeastern Indian state of Nagaland to Tseminyu, a city 100 kilometers south. It took time for her to make friends in the new city.
Although Vero had been a Christian her whole life, during this season of personal turmoil she began to seriously seek God’s guidance. While she had a King James Version Bible at home, she wanted a study Bible that would help her delve deeper and meditate on the Word. Then she remembered her father’s study Bible back home, lying unused for nearly 10 years after he purchased a new one.
The next time she was at her parents’ house, she asked her father if she could bring his Bible back to Tseminyu and he agreed. The nearly 30-year-old annotated Bible had a stained leather cover that was starting to peel off at the edges. After it saw years of heavy use, her father put it on the bookshelf. Vero wanted to refurbish the Bible, as it represented a piece of her parental home.
Scrolling through Instagram, Atone came across her friend Nenti Kez’s video. In it, she peels away the leather cover of a Bible, fixes its spine, and creates a new canvas cover with paintings and a verse in calligraphy. Vero reached out to her friend, who lives in Dimapur, asking her to reconstruct and personalize her father’s Bible with the image of Sermon on the Mount.
After three weeks, Kez sent back the new and updated Bible, which has become Vero’s spiritual companion.
“It is exactly my aim to draw people closer to the Word of God,” said Kez, who has customized and reconstructed nearly 3,000 Bibles in the past five years.
A self-trained artist and calligrapher, Kez’s creative journey began in August 2021, when she posted a video and photographs of her own Bible on social media. She embellished it with vibrant florals and painted her name and Lamentations 3:22—“The faithful love of the Lord never ends”—in calligraphy. Family and friends left comments praising her artwork.
Then one of Kez’s closest friends, Bensi Tep, requested that Kez customize two Bibles: one for her older sister who was relocating abroad and another for her friend’s mother. Tep loved the Bible’s vibrant palettes, carefully chosen fabrics, and intricate calligraphy.
“I am her closest friend and her first client,” said Tep, chuckling.
Soon, requests poured in from far and wide. She began charging for her Bible makeovers. “I never imagined I would take this up full-time,” said Kez.
Today, Kez’s L’Arte receives up to 50 orders every month. Orders surge during the Advent season and Holy Week. Her younger sister helps her with design work as she receives requests from across India, including Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Chennai.
Yet as her business has grown, she’s struggled to balance the deeply personal nature of the work with the realities of running a business. At times Kez felt discouraged as she dealt with creative exhaustion, financial uncertainty, difficult clients, and logistical setbacks.
During one period of exhaustion, she questioned whether she should close her business. Yet during that time, many of the verses her clients requested for their covers were about grace, strength, peace, and perseverance.
“Over time, those words began speaking into my own life too, like little reminders God was giving me personally,” Kez said. “It made me realize the importance of continuing to create with sincerity even when things are difficult behind the scenes, and how this work is ultimately not just about art or business but about serving people in a meaningful way.”
Clients come to her with the Bibles that belonged to their parents, grandparents, and other family members. Many want to pass the Bibles down as family heirlooms, reminding their children of their spiritual inheritance.
While most request floral art and an engraved Bible verse, some clients ask for more unique designs.
Reny Pio, a mother of two young girls from Chennai, asked Kez to draw her favorite Disney character, Rapunzel from the 2010 animated film Tangled.
“The image of Rapunzel looking out of the window resonates with me,” Pio said. “Every time I open my Bible, it reminds me to look up to look to heaven for guidance.”
When Pio sent Kez her Bible, it was worn out from heavy use. Years of annotations had loosened the binding and peeled the cover. It was a gift from her husband and held special value for her. After Kez’s redesign, Pio gets to continue using her treasured possession, which she hopes to pass on to her children.
Another mother commissioned a customized Bible for her son’s fifth birthday. Keeping with the boy’s interest, Kez painted dolphins and sea creatures across the cover along with Joshua 1:9: “Be strong and courageous.” The boy keeps it by his bedside and proudly carries it to his Sunday School.
“He treasures his Bible,” his mother said. “It has become a gentle reminder of God’s Word in his little life, wrapped in something created just for him.”
Kez’s daily routine of working with Scripture and coming in contact with the spiritual lives of others has strengthened her own faith.
“It could be a familiar verse,” she said. “But I feel more connected than ever when I am inscribing it on a Bible.”
She is careful to describe her work as “complementary” to the sacredness of the Word and not to “compete” with it. “My role is not to overpower the Word of God,” she said. “It is to help people engage more deeply. We are visual people. That’s how God created us.”
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