About Firebird Glass
Firebird Glass is the studio practice of Lara Fields, named for the mythological bird of transformation and rebirth. The work is built from glass and light: rigid materials made to feel kinetic, fluid, alive.
Working from California's Central Coast, the studio creates original stained glass panels, sculptures, and commissions.
Artist Statement
Dare alla luce.
It is the Italian phrase used to describe giving birth, but it literally translates as “give to the light”. I discovered stained glass the way most people do: Victorian windows, repeated patterns, pretty but decorative and lifeless. Then I studied the history of stained glass in art and architecture and found what glass was originally supposed to do - give ordinary people their first experience of color and light as something transcendent: towering images that shifted in the light, lighting up cathedral floors and walls in a riot of color and glory. Color that moved. Glass that felt alive. Light that filled the soul.
The ocean is where I feel that same thing. Standing at the waterline, or sitting on a board, feeling how small you are against something that powerful and that alive, watching the light flicker and move and the colors of the water and sky shift. Watching the sunrise shift and move across hills that roll like waves.
That’s the feeling I put into my artwork. I chose glass specifically because of its dichotomy - the color and texture with light streaming through it and projecting itself in space screams life, and the 'pretty stained glass window' is soulless. My style is flowing, abstract, free - and the glass itself fights against that. I want it to feel like the color is almost liquid in nature. I want the colors to light up the space around it, to glow with the sun, and feel quieter in the shade - to project itself forward in a way that canvas cannot. With texture and color and lines and light, the glass comes alive.
Give it to the light.
Process
Each piece begins with a specific gesture or moment: the apex of a wave, the suspension of a breach, the curl of a tentacle. Glass captures this motion through its inherent texture and translucency, material properties that become active elements in the composition.
I work with traditional copper foil and lead came techniques, selecting glass for how it responds to light and holds color. The structure required by stained glass construction becomes the tension against which the expressive forms push. Lead lines that would typically impose geometry instead follow organic curves. The result is work that holds both precision and gesture, stillness and motion.
Every piece is designed, cut, and assembled by me in my San Luis Obispo studio, from original design through final solder.
