Three Questions to Lotte Glob

LOTTE GLOB three questions

Three Questions LOTTE GLOB

Three Questions to Lotte Glob

Your work comes from the land and the spirit within it- lochs, mountains, stones, as living beings. When did you first feel this connection and how do natural forces shape your work?

I remember clearly the moment I first felt that connection. I was seven years old and had just arrived - at 3am - with my family in a remote Norwegian glen. I recall the giant mountains, the rocks, the trees, the smells and the stillness of the land. I remember hearing the distant sounds of a waterfall and I knew from that moment where I wouldn’t want to live. From then on I drew mountains, trees and waterfalls and I have been roaming on beaches, forests and fields, drawing, collecting and making things from the natural objects that I find, including, of course, clay - and I haven’t stopped yet!

Indigenous cultures acknowledge kinship

holistically- land, water, sky, plants, animals, and people as part of a whole ecosystem. How does this idea of kinship relate to your Danish ancestry and your roots in the Northwest of Scotland?

My childhood in Denmark was rooted in history. Icelandic sagas and Nordic fables were the stories I read and from an early age I was helping my father, an archaeologist, with his work. I would be set tasks to scrape moss off boulders, looking for old rock drawings which he needed to record. I trailed behind him through the landscape as he took photographs of graveyards, old trees, monuments, the remnants of the past. In this way the past became my future.

At nineteen years old, I arrived in Scotland. I had an instant feeling of connection to the land and the people of the north. My work has always

Your Eriboll creatures are joyful expressions of being at one with the landscape and also the child within. How important is play in the studio and how does this influence how you see the world around you?

arisen from the world around me, both natural and human - I hear the geology, I feel the culture and history of the people in the old sites, the ruins, the ancient villages and I feel part of the past. I have also travelled extensively in the nordic landscape, in Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland. So, to answer your question, deep down inside me I am carrying an old Viking.

For me play equals experiment equals learning equals exploring equals surprise equals creativity equals fun. Play gives you the freedom to create.

Play for me is serious and hard work. You don’t so much have ideas as ideas find you. Then you are caught by them and have to follow them, just as it was at seven years old, but with the help of the technical skills I have learned over many years.

It is important for me to be out in the landscape, observing, absorbing, thinking or just clearing my mind of thought. My Loch Eriboll creatures arise from this process but they are not always joyful things. They are troubled beings, emerging from polluted seas, leaving behind the once pristine waters, coming to the land to question the irresponsible actions of man.