“To create something out of nothing, something that goes from an idea, onto paper and becomes physical is something that fascinates me” says Chris Idema, a Rotterdam-based architect and printmaker. It is for this reason that Chris always wanted to become an architect, pursuing his love for lines, shapes, and depth.
Not wanting to solely be a building engineer, and in the search for something more creative, Chris went to study at the Sint Lucas in Boxtel, The Netherlands. Here, the possibilities of becoming an architect were born, and he learnt to imitate marble, create stained glass sheets, and paint. It was not for another year or two that Chris came into contact with graphic illustrating, drafting tools, and animation. “Being quite a set-minded kid, I only wanted to push forward towards my goal and never felt that I really fit perfectly. It might have also have to do something with my art teacher who didn’t believe I was good at painting, in hindsight I should have maybe told him I am pretty colourblind” explains the printmaker. During the four years Chris was studying for his BA in Building Engineering, and his MSc. in Architecture, he started to miss visual and graphic designing, particularly the art, colour and fun it brought to his practice.
Just over a year ago, whilst visiting a friend’s house, Chris noticed that he had an old sketch hanging up; one that he had made during his studies. He states; “He told me it was there for four years, a conversation-starter and something he enjoyed to see daily. He asked me why I wasn’t making more art-prints in order to fill living rooms”. This, and more hungry-for-art friends, sparked the search for a way for Chris to print his illustrations in limited editions, and “silkscreen was the obvious choice”.
Chris has been producing screen prints ever since; “I feel such a balance of love and hate about it that I just want to strive for more and better work. It means i’m able to implement a wide range of skills, software and ideas that all come down to the printing process. It gives an immediate feedback that might even affect the design. It is a learning curve that ever changes further projects.”
In his works, Chris uses 2D and 3D software, enjoying the “duality between this perfect digital world, where the lines are exactly as I want them, where everything fits and nothing goes wrong, and implementing it in a manual process where everything can go wrong and where the process of mistakes can help you find new ideas and ways”. Although he used to strive for the perfect print, replicating computer quality, Chris is now slowly embracing the ‘’imperfections’’ as perfections, marking each print as unique from any other. He describes; “In architecture it is difficult to embrace the imperfections. Here the shape or idea stays the same, the details however become blurry, and in most cases distort the beauty of the art and build. They are two completely different fields, silkscreen printing and architecture, but for me they compliment each other and start to help both ways.”
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