STAINED GLASS ART - ORIGINAL ART

Each of the links below will take you to view samples of Larry Zgoda's stained glass art.

Residential Stained Glass
Larry Zgoda's initial interest in stained glass had to do with the residential application of the art. "Stained glass is very personal, almost intimate in the way it enlivens an environment. It is not surprising that people would want to surround themselves with this kind of beauty in the places where they live".


View Residential Stained Glass Art

Corporate Stained Glass






View Corporate Stained Glass Art

Public Art Stained Glass






View Public Art Stained Glass Art

Liturgical Stained Glass






View Liturgical Stained Glass Art

Institutional and Hospitality Stained Glass






View Institutional and Hospitality Stained Glass Art

STAINED GLASS ART - INNOVATIONS

Beveled Stained Glass
One of my earliest memories of stained glass was a simple, geometric, beveled glass transom in a Victorian era gray stone on the block where I grew up in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. I remember noticing the clear glass pieces with the prismatic treatment along the edge of each piece. It is curious to note that over a hundred years ago, such windows were made with the intention of casting rainbows into the interior environment to create a dramatic and beautiful effect. With the profuse availability of quality beveled glass today, this sort of environmental enhancement is very feasible.
View Beveled Stained Glass Art

Cut-Polished Jewels Stained Glass
Since my earliest years of interest in stained glass, I've had regular inspiration from the stained, beveled and jeweled windows of the Victorian era, which still enhance many historic environments in and around Chicago. The colored sunlight cast into the interiors from these windows always impresses me. This light filtered through a myriad of cut and polished jewels and beveled plate glass becomes rainbows, as if prisms of various hues and profiles were held up in the sunlight. Our predecessors recognized how beautiful this light is and how a natural phenomenon can be utilized for a very dramatic effect.

There are many kinds of stained glass jewels readily available, but the key words here are cut and polished. Most jewels are made in a mould and simply polished on the flat side. I go to great lengths to obtain full-cut jewels in which the flat side is cut and each of the facets is cut and polished, as if it were a precious stone. The facets cast a strong, spectral, patch of light and imbue the work with a sparkling kinetics.

I use Swarovski, machine-cut, crystal jewels or hand-cut jewels of comparable quality. At times, antique jewels of this quality are available.

If our intention is to assemble beautiful environments in sympathy with elemental forces and materials of nature and human imagination, cut jewels impose a radiance not found anywhere else.
View Cut-Polished Jewels Stained Glass Art

Clovis Stained Glass
In 2005, I created a new approach to stained and leaded glass - CLOVIS GLASS. The overall effect is similar to the look of knapped-flint, arrow or spear points of the Clovis era in North America, 14,000 years ago...hence the name.

In this original technique, pieces of plate and other thick glasses are edged with a handheld chipping tool, forming scallops and making them thin enough along the edge to accommodate the lead channel.

Many kinds of glass lend themselves to this innovative technique. Several of these are glue chip, antique, crown and flashed, a glass in which a thin layer color is flashed over a base glass, usually clear. When scalloped, the color is removed and the clear glass is revealed.
View Clovis Stained Glass Art

Crown Stained Glass
Crown glass is the material from which stained glass windows were made in the infancy of our craft, year 1100 and before. Since it is made in the form of spun discs, striations and streaks of color occur in arcs. Making a stained glass window with this material involved cutting up the discs and assembling the pieces into a stained glass panel. The direction of the kinetic quality can be either random or determined. As one moves past the resulting window, or objects move past on the other side, dramatic, visual phenomena occur. The effect is similar to a carnival, fun-house mirror cut into pieces and reassembled with a focused randomness.
View Crown Stained Glass Art

Ornamental Iron Armatures Stained Glass
Having spent many years as an armchair scholar of architectural history and a collector of artifacts from that history, it eventually occurred to me that antique architectural fragments could be nicely utilized in stained glass art. There were a number of wrought iron (now called forged steel) pieces around and I made some works using these pieces as reinforcing armatures. I knew that in the dawn of our craft, since glass and lead alone did not have the strength to hold up in the expansive cathedral windows that were aspired to, craftsmen used ornamental iron armatures to hold up the matrix and fortify it against the push of the wind.

My use of these components requires that accommodation be made for the places where the iron flares out and extends into the plane of the glass. Here a creative use of slumped and other dimensional glass is required. I use antique and new wrought iron and forged steel components. Occasionally, it is required that I cut and weld the material to get just the desired effect.

Although I consider my works to be modern manifestations of this ancient art, bringing this kind of historical quality into my compositions adds a flavor of romance and history.
View Ornamental Iron Armatures Stained Glass Art

Stainless Glass
Stainless Glass is stained glass containing little or no color. The term expresses the modernity of stainless steel with the timelessness of stained glass. Working within this color minimal format causes the elements of line, pattern and texture to be more apparent. The inclusion of beveled glass and cut-polished jewels is a subtle and indirect way of adding color -- the rainbow-refraction effect.

View Stainless Glass Art

Stained Glass Sculpture
The idea for Architonomous Art Glass began in early 1994. I had created many decorative, stained glass objects, mainly jewelry boxes. A friend suggested that I could take one of my box lids and put it on a plate stand and display it as an object d'art. I began sketching this idea, and it kept coming out looking like a piece of furniture or a house. This resulted in a stained glass panel set into an easel. Often these were decorated with architectural elements - finials, spheres, cubes, etc.

Architonomous is an amalgam of the words architectural and autonomous.

Architonomous Art Glass, stained glass sculptures were initially produced in editions in which a design was repeated, but with a different combination of colors, textures, wood species and decorative elements.

Today, I create these works on a singular basis, sparing no time, effort or premium materials. These studied compositions are manifest in sculptural works that are truly beautiful works of fine art.
View Stained Glass Sculpture

More Stained Glass Art Techniques
There are many stained glass techniques utilized in the creation of these works that have not been previously mentioned. Some of these are glass painting, rondels, "chunk glass", cabochons and tiles.

With painting on glass, the paint is applied with a variety of techniques and usually manipulated before firing. After firing, the paint becomes a permanent part of the glass like the glaze on a piece of pottery. Silver staining is an aspect of painting in which a permanent yellow stain is applied using silver nitrate.

Rondels are glass pieces which a made by a glassblower spinning small circles. They are usually 2" to 6" in diameter. They are essentially a small version of crown glass. They can have a dramatic, visually kinetic quality.

"Chunk glass" pieces are many kinds of broken slabs, cullet or plate in which the fissures of broken glass are evident.

Cabochons are small lenses, used like jewels. Tiles can comprise many kinds of pressed or cast glass components.

There are many opportunities to combine techniques and components. An example of this is beveled flashed glass. Flashed glass can sometimes be crown glass. The Clovis Glass treatment can be done to crown, plate and many other thick glasses.

Sometimes there is an opportunity to use materials rescued or recycled from the past. Some works containing such materials also have "imperfections" such as scratches or chips. An acceptance of this is a part of the creative process.

The many components and techniques used in making these works are not as important as the creativity required to compose with them. As in music with millions of possible combinations for tone, cadence, harmony and dissonance, stained glass has line, color, pattern and light. Honest composition, in some way comes from nature. Creating art in sympathy with architecture is a rewarding effort.
View Stained Glass Art Techniques