PAINTING WITH LIGHT

Artist Lara Fields’ Creations

Aren’t Your Grandmother’s Stained Glass

By Amy Blasco

Photos by Sarah Kathleen

San Luis Obispo artist Lara Fields loves to paint, but you won’t find a palette or brushes in her studio. Instead, it’s packed with glass— countless sheets and shards in a variety of tints, textures, and transparencies.

The owner of Firebird Art Glass, Fields is constantly thinking about how to transform that liquid sand into a lasting work of art.

“I call it painting with light,” she said, “because it’s color and texture; it’s about how it looks in the light and how it looks out of the light.

There’s really a lot that goes into [making stained glass].”

Her goal as an artist is to make each piece look effortlessly beautiful. Of course, that’s easier said than done, especially when working with such a fragile material.

“Glass is extraordinarily sharp, and it breaks all the time,” Fields said.

“I’m always fitting pieces together and deciding how one piece goes with another. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and having to carve out your own pieces.”

Luckily, Fields also loves puzzles. Before launching Firebird Glass, she worked as a software engineer.

“Most people think of software as just super analytical and mathematical, but it’s actually a highly creative career,” she said. “The people who make really good software tend to be very creative.”

Now Fields uses those data-driven skills to cut and solder rather than code and scroll. Once inspired by an idea, the techie-turned-artist starts by creating a design in Adobe Illustrator. That gets printed and cut out into pieces, which are glued onto the back of the glass as a guide. Then she starts scoring, cutting, and grinding the glass and soldering it together with lead came and copper foil. But sometimes the glass doesn’t cooperate.

“Sometimes I have to change angles when soldering or fix a crack. I have to figure out how to make it work,” Fields explained. “That’s the core of software design. It has to be practical, it has to work with the materials you already have. It all has to fit into this cohesive language that works.”

But she’s always up for the challenge, adding, “Doing slightly complicated things that are hard to make are kind of my jam.”

Take, for example, Fields’ favorite creation of a giant octopus floating in the ocean, its amber arms billowing in the crystalline waves are so lifelike it almost feels like you’re underwater as well. Those ethereal appendages had to be painstakingly reworked from the original design so they would fit together without cracking.

Breakages are avoided for several reasons; whole pieces are obviously more aesthetically pleasing and safer, but Fields also wants to use her glass as efficiently as possible.

Much of the colored and textured pieces she finds come from specialty glass shops like Kiss My Glass in Santa Cruz and small-batch online retailers like Delphi Glass.

But Fields loved her eight-legged friend so much, she decided to keep it for herself. He now stares down from the studio window watching the artist in action while Fields’ dogs—golden retriever Holly and lab/golden mix Sterling Archer—watch from below. (“They’re my helpers,” she said.)

She’s currently working on another octopus with what she called “the perfect octopus glass” from Kiss My Glass. This stained-glass cephalopod will be for sale, either online or at local art events. The artist-engineer has even developed a formula for pricing her work.

“I factor in the square footage of the glass used and the number of pieces cut,” she said. “I used to do it by the number of hours I spent on it, but that didn’t work. Sometimes I like to be fussy and get it just right.”

Visit firebirdglass.com to check out Fields' gallery and to inquire about purchases. Her stained glass is also currently showing at Big Sky Café in downtown San Luis Obispo.