Larry Zgoda, a Chicago-area stained-glass artist, helped revive the legacy of Edgar Miller through research, collaboration, and his non-profit work.
Larry Zgoda, a whimsical and inventive stained-glass artist whose work helped bring forgotten Chicago talent back into view, died Feb. 9. He was 75.
Zgoda’s story begins not with a commission but with curiosity.. In the early 1980s. while walking through Old Town. he noticed buildings filled with murals. woodcarvings. stained glass. and metalwork—craft that felt unlike anything he’d seen.. After asking around. he learned the maker was Edgar Miller. a celebrated Chicago artist and designer whose reputation had faded after World War II.
That discovery set off a rare kind of creative partnership.. Zgoda read everything he could find on Miller, then learned Miller was still alive and living in California.. He wrote a letter and, over the following year, built a correspondence that culminated in a meeting in 1984.. Together. they agreed to collaborate on a stained-glass window for a Chicago church—an early step in what became a sustained creative relationship. with Miller designing and Zgoda fabricating.. Miller even moved back to Chicago, drawing the collaborators closer.
For Zgoda, preserving Miller’s legacy wasn’t a side project.. He believed Miller’s talent matched the stature of architects and designers widely recognized in American history. while Miller had never received the same level of public attention.. That conviction shaped both his artistic output and his long-term efforts to document and protect the story behind the work.
After Miller died in 1993. Zgoda helped found the Edgar Miller Legacy. a non-profit intended to keep Miller’s art from slipping back into obscurity.. Friends and supporters described Zgoda as the kind of person who gave away credit without thinking of it as a trade-off.. The non-profit’s work provided the backbone for a 2009 book. “Edgar Miller and the Handmade Home: Chicago’s Forgotten Renaissance Man. ” by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams.
There’s also a deeply human dimension to what Zgoda did. and it’s easy to miss if you only focus on the artistry.. When someone spends years cataloging another person’s life and work. building archives and pushing for recognition. they’re making a statement about memory—about who gets remembered and why.. In Zgoda’s case, that decision meant the built environment would carry more stories, not fewer.
Zgoda’s own path into stained glass started in a way that didn’t fit a traditional craft résumé.. After studying film at Columbia College Chicago. he learned glasswork largely on his own and opened Larry Zgoda Studio on the Northwest Side in 1978.. Those early steps mattered. because they produced a maker who treated stained glass as something alive—able to adapt to contemporary architecture rather than being trapped in imitation.
Colleagues described him as fun-loving and quick to connect. joking and listening to everything from punk rock to classical music while working.. That temperament showed up in his art. too: Zgoda was drawn to the unusual. to whimsical forms. and to designs that felt less like decoration and more like an alternate visual language.. He also spent time pushing back against what he saw as a craft that too often defaulted to replicating well-known styles.
In a 2006 interview. he said he disliked the idea that stained glass had become a craft of copying—“paint-by-numbers” based on famous predecessors.. His goal was to create work that hadn’t existed before, not just reinterpret what already had a name.. Even when he started out doing knockoffs to make ends meet. he moved away from that approach once it didn’t satisfy him.
Among his most striking contributions were architectural installations—doors and windows for a convent in Lemont. a synagogue in Evanston. and branches of the Chicago Public Library including the Clearing and Logan Square locations.. He also created work for an office tower in Minneapolis and for the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work.. These commissions placed his craft in public view. but his influence didn’t stop there: unique pieces he built and displayed on easels could be found in homes and collections around Chicago.
Zgoda’s legacy, however, is as much about how he collaborated as what he produced.. P.K.. “Trish” VanderBeke. an architect and friend. described him as endlessly curious and generous. unassuming despite a significant body of work and important partnerships with Miller.. Zac Bleicher. executive director of the Edgar Miller Legacy. said the world wouldn’t know Miller’s story and work without Zgoda.
Before he was widely recognized, Zgoda built a studio culture where making felt like learning.. People remembered rows of glass and metal components waiting on shelves. alongside Zgoda’s willingness to talk through art and design.. He lived for a time near Irving Park Road and Western Avenue. close to his North Side studio. and later more recently in Woodstock.. Those details matter because they suggest how Zgoda worked: close to the materials. close to the questions. and close to the people who would carry the craft forward.
He was born Oct. 7, 1950, and grew up in Bucktown and Arlington Heights. His father, Alexander, worked as a mailman and woodworker; his mother, Augustina, was a seamstress. That family background—practical, hands-on, skilled—echoed in his own career even as he steered it toward something distinct.
Zgoda died of cancer, and services have been held.. After his death, the gap he leaves won’t be only in stained glass studios, churches, libraries, and public buildings.. It will also be in the quieter work of preservation: cataloging. archiving. and choosing to spotlight someone else’s brilliance until the world catches up.