Formal content in glass art

Abstract

This study focused on the studious exploration of glass mediums through cold and hot practices as a formal content with a goal of creating sculptural and design concepts for indoor and outdoor applications. Glass in cold practice is subjected to cutting and joining it with adhesive while in hot practice is heated in a kiln at various temperatures. Glass art in Uganda is in infancy, having been introduced in the mid 1930s Ayago (2019). For over 8 decades, glass has not attracted much attention of creative and innovative artists. This art discipline has been confined to stained glass and mosaic which in return has led to the production and education of glass art culture to be viewed in a sluggish development state. Glass is abundantly available in our environment due to reckless and irresponsible littering, in addition, Komakech et al.,(2014) discourse reveals Kampala on monthly basis legally disposes waste of 28000 tons, of which glass is 0.6% equated to 140 tons. This study considered the use of Nikolov (2017) aesthetic design theory, to create objects of meaning out of the trashed glass. Being a qualitative research design, it was aimed at examining the historical development of glass and glass art, investigate the existing cold and hot practices through document and archival servery, interviews, focus group discussion and observations. With the use of thematic data analysis, data was presented to create meaningful making of the study, Results showed social, political and economic factors being relevant to developments in glass art which have evolved by negotiating the way into modern lives and not reserved to church domain, existence of cold practices mostly of glass cutting and joining with adhesive, and hot practices which is at infancy, the climax of this study was a studious progressive and retrogressive explorations of glass mediums in cold and hot practices and the result were objects of dazzling colors for indoor and out door spaces that demonstrated formal content embedded in their production processes and evoking visual statements that negotiates the glass medium aesthetic application. This turned to essential since meaningful making was done to effect glass art to be prevalent as well as prevention of environmental degradation.