Peter Shire could be a personified version of “Where’s Waldo?” for his love of two things: striped shirts and art.
Based in Echo Park, Shire has spent decades being immersed in his home studio, focusing on pottery. Shire showcased his “Innovative Arts and Design” presentation to College of the Canyons students Tuesday morning — discussing the importance of creativity as a form of resistance before showcasing a teapot demonstration.
As a founding member of the Memphis Design Movement, an Italian design group throughout the 1980s, Shire helped emulate the following from previous art movements: bold colors, geometric shapes, intricate designs and unconventional materials.
“From my point of view, abstract expressionism is a decorative art, and it’s an art that, within the language of exclusion, relies on its subsequent histories for meaning,” Shire said when answering students’ questions.
With Shire’s artistic beliefs including the idea that people are often afraid of color, especially color schemes that could “clash,” Shire challenges the status quo, arguing that they can instead “pop.” Shire channels his love for multiple colors when picking out a striped shirt to wear — something many of the students wore in support of his lecture.
“The striped shirts — I’m neurotic. I don’t want to choose which color to wear, so I can have both at once. Red is a primary, but I like them all. It’s more of a balance of how the stripes are,” Shire said. “My presentation was what you would call a survey, and my way of working is reliant on drawings as a central issue because that’s the moment of discovery and of thoughts, and the closest thing to the representation of a thought. Like footprints in the sand, [and] the different materials transposing my effort.”
Shire is a full-time potter and artist who works in his own studio, and has been for nearly 55 years.
“I started in pottery. I’m now working in pottery. Of course [there’s] a lot of paper — drawing on paper. I’ll be working in metal again soon, and who knows about glass? It may come. There’s always woodwork,” Shire said.
Cindy Leung, a full-time art faculty member at COC who is a friend of Shire’s, asked him to come speak to the newly established ceramics program at COC.
“I’ve been a fan of his work since grad school, and then when I came here, I was trying to see if I could meet him because not a lot of artists that we admire are still alive today. So I found it very special that I could invite him to COC,” Leung said. “This program started in the 1970s, but they reopened it at the start of fall semester because a lot of high schools in Santa Clarita have a ceramics program.”
Leung has been teaching at COC for over three years, and finds it necessary to have these types of programs at community colleges.
“Community college is very affordable and it’s community-driven, so we want to bring that back to the community while also meeting the demand of students, because we know that if students have taken ceramics in high school, they most likely will try to take it again here,” Leung said. “I like to bring professional artists here to give a lecture so the students can understand how to become a professional artist without starving.”
With electronic kilns placed outside, in addition to providing students with the proper equipment to learn ceramics, Leung is confident that students can find careers in art in the future.
As a professional artist educating the younger generations, Shire is inspired by many beliefs and philosophical ideologies, fundamentally believing that if something is done, one can wreck it or redo it, but can never undo it.
“There are a lot of choices to make, and we can make them to be better.”
