Today’s featured artist is South African visual artist Lothar Böttcher, who uses his skills and passion to give glass a voice as a contemporary art medium. Böttcher was also inspired by the West African song Sedjedo sung by the UJ Choir and the fear of the times. “I wanted to merge these dichotomies, unifying them in one sculpture which resembles a head with open mouth and eye surrounded by dots… exhaling notes or inhaling symbolic “viruses”. “We are in the midst of global change for humankind and even if I’m unable to understand the sung words of Sedjedo I comprehend the beauty and fallibility of what makes us human in this new dawn”, says Böttcher
About Lothar Böttcher
Born to German immigrants in 1973, Lothar grew up in Pretoria, South Africa. He studied Fine and Applied Arts at the Tshwane University of Technology, completing Sculpture, Glass, Photography and Printmaking. In 1997, Lothar enrolled at the Staatliche Glasfachschule Hadamar, Germany, where he graduated as a journeyman with the title Glasveredler – Fachrichtung Schliff (Glass cutter & cold worker) with flying colours in 2000.
He returned to his hometown, Pretoria, in 2001 and founded his company, Obsidian Glass. Since then, Lothar is an active participant in the South African art scene, using his skills and passion to give glass a voice as a contemporary art medium.
Lothar launched Blow Your Sculpture in 2014, a collaborative project introducing glass as sculptural medium to South African artists, with its fourth iteration planned for 2021. Lothar is a long time member of the Glass Art Society, The Association of Arts, Pretoria (of which he is also a committee member) as well as Glasspool e.V. and Bundesverband Kunsthandwerk in Germany. Pocket Lens was selected for the New Glass Now exhibition in 2019 at the Corning Museum of Glass.
His work was also selected for New Glass Review 32 & 38 and published in the Schiffer Art Book Glass Art: 112 Contemporary Artists. Lothar is represented in several museums locally and internationally.
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