As told to Lynnda Greene
Sam Stang blew his first trademark bowls, vases and large art pieces right here in St. Louis at Ibex, the legendary glass studio he opened with two friends 20 years ago. From his studio in Augusta, Stang reflects upon glassblowing’s long tradition in the region.
My friends David Levi and Dimitri Michaelides and I took off to study with Fritz Dreisbach in North Carolina and Italian master Lino Tagliapietra in Maine. When we got back, we knew that we wanted to open our own studio, and when we found the right space on Tower Grove Avenue in 1985, we started Ibex, a name I made up after a kind of goat.
The idea was that with our own studio, we could experiment and develop a stylistic identity that would be distinct from the funky freeform work going on at the time. We designed everything by consensus, talking our ideas through until we’d distilled something pure and workable, usually in geometric shapes and bright colors. We took our first work to the ACC [American Craft Council] show in Baltimore with low expectations—and prices, which may be why we sold everything in less than 24 hours. That was the beginning—we’d reached a market.
We began getting our work into significant galleries around the country, so that by the time we had our first St. Louis studio sale in December of 1986, we’d established a reputation. Local collectors who’d traveled and seen our work elsewhere lined up that morning with blankets and baskets, waiting to get in! We had solid support from Emily Pulitzer, Tom Eagleton, the Emerson corporation. St. Louis, like the whole country, was waking up to this art form.
Now I’m seeing a burgeoning community again in terms of artists and new gallery spaces around town. St. Louis has always generated high-quality artists; like as not, they remain largely unsung, but they’re there, and always have been, because this city attracts them.
