We recently connected with Chaim Machlev and have shared our conversation below.
Chaim, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
That’s a very interesting subject. I feel like there is a DotsToLines person which needs to be secure enough to make the right decisions and be on top of everything, and there is Chaim Machlev which is fighting with confidence and insecurity like all of us nowadays. I am secure enough to admitted it though.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m originally from Israel. When living in Israel, I was a project manager in an IT company, in charge of many technicians working long hours a day. I was burnt out and tired. When I reached 30 years old, I decided to get a tattoo. I was never into tattoos before, but I decided to go for it. That’s when everything changed for me — the process of tattooing and the feeling afterward was something I had never felt before. I felt completely full of life and excitement again. That’s when I realized that I wanted to become a tattoo artist. Except I had no artistic background, but I was willing to do everything possible to achieve it, which led me to move to Berlin. I moved to Berlin with a little backpack on my back and tried to search for someone to give me a chance. It was extremely hard as I had no artistic portfolio. I found a shop and a great guy who took me under his wing. After 6 months, I decided to try it on my own, spread my wings, and opened my own little place. I lived there and tattooed as many people as I could to learn this ancient craft. Created my brand under the ethical codes of art, spirituality and individuality.
Now 12 years later, I expand myself to California and live between Berlin and Los Angeles in both i have private studios and work on one customer a day.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I think that consistency, persistency and being focused on the target is the most important thing. Learning how to tattoo is not as hard as learning how to deal with the responsibility of being a renowned artist that has to make the right decisions for customer who wait long to get tattooed and fly over from all edges of the world.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I love collaborating with brands for showing the strong connection between art and tattoos. I did a few fashion collections with high end brands, designed a car for Mercedes-Benz in the past and did a few gigs with BMW, etc. I love how big brands open they thoughts and minds to work with tattoo artists. It shows a lot how to world is developing and tattoos are slowly being more and more accepted.
I love doing collaborations with all kind of brands / artists and open for discussions as long as what we do is on the artistic level.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dotstolines.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dotstolines
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DotsToLines
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQuXwIkHEATXgJQOhNGyhlQ/feed
- Other: https://linktr.ee/DotsToLines
Image Credits
Profile photo by Ronald Dick for GQ magazine interview. Tattoo photos are all by Chaim Machlev / Erik Weiss.
