Peter Shire currently has an exhibit called "Love and P's" at New Galerie in Paris with a new array of elegant, geometric scultpures and mugs (and mugs that are sculptures).
The gallery has a new interview with this LA legend of ceramics who is the mastermind of Echo Park Pottery, and below, read an excerpt from our Juxtapoz design feature on him last year.
Juxtapoz: What can you say about your days at the Chouinard Art Institute, which is now the California Institute of the Arts?
Peter Shire: Chouinard connects to the socio-economics of the pre-war and the immediate post-war Southern California scene. That scene was one of a very humanistic, non-commercial infatuation with very high ideals of the “art way.” To be there at that time and catch those values was a realm apart of what we know today.
Why do think you’re attracted to sharp angles?
Because I’m also attracted to round and sensuous shapes, especially boobs. What would black be without white? Heads without tails? Mutt without Jeff?
Coffee without mugs? What’s the last piece you worked on in your studio?
Gargantuan replicas of our Echo Park Pottery mugs. They are really silly. They could probably hold a half gallon of coffee. This is one of those things we do, where the wonder of a good joke can’t be resisted.
What’s your relationship to color and why do you like working with it?
Something so flabbergasting and mysterious, it defies description or dissection. It’s simply an emotion.