Peter Shire
Los Angeles, CA
Peter Shire
Peter Shire, a native of Los Angeles born in 1947, grew up and continues to work in the Echo Park neighborhood, where his studio is located. Working in a multitude of media, which defies categorization, his work spans sculpture, furniture, drawing, painting, installation, ceramics, toys, and interior design. He graduated from the Chouinard Art Institute, first attending the Saturday program as a child and ultimately earning a B.A. there. Shire has exhibited at the Jewish Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson, and is included in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
For his profile produced by The Artist Profile Archive, Peter was interviewed in his studio while sitting in a chair he designed as a member of the Memphis design group, based in Milan. Additional footage was shot at the Los Angeles gallery, Kayne Griffin Corcoran where he had a solo exhibition in 2018. The show, Drawings, Impossible Teapots, Furniture, and Sculpture enveloped the gallery in a joyous riot of color and shapes and spanned many decades.
Peter Shire - LA studio - 10:38
“When they ask ‘What do I do?’
I’m a father, a grandfather, a potter, a designer, an artist, a sculptor, a metalworker, and a bon vivant. My wife claims that’s what confuses everybody. It really has to do with what I’m doing at the moment.
I say, ‘Well, I’m an artist,’ and they say, ‘Well, yeah. But what do you do for a living?’
’Well I, I work — I work as a carpenter.’
Which is it? All of these things enter into what I do and the way that I like things. I like to make the things I like. What makes a person an artist, and where does that come from? Everybody wants to know. And I want to know, too.”
Peter Shire Studio
“As human beings, we don’t know where we came from. Yet we come here and we are this fantastic matrix of cells and vessels and unexplainable moving parts. Where does it come from? We don’t know.
One of the things about being an artist is we imagine things that aren’t there — haven’t been there — and then make them happen. Which is a form of making something out of nothing. ”
