Over the last half century, Peter Shire has pursued his artistic journey with an enviable spirit of fearlessness, irreverence, and originality, producing a prolific, internationally acclaimed body of work that gleefully defies facile categorization. “When I think about my position in the art world,” Shire has said, “I realize it is extremely mobile, because I include and cross over so many boundaries.”

While Shire’s work—vessels, furniture, public art, painting, sculpture, and more—has freely traversed disciplines and media, untethered to convention, he has remained deeply rooted to one quiet corner of the world.

Home for Shire has always been Elysian Heights, a hilly, verdant section of LA’s Echo Park neighborhood. It’s where he was born in 1947 and where he established his studio and Echo Park Pottery in the early 1970s. It’s where he first received a visit from Ettore Sottsass, who invited him to become a founding member of Memphis in 1980. It’s where he and his wife Donna continue to live and work today, and where they raised their daughter Ava, who lives and works there as well.

In Classical literature, Elysium is a paradise for heroes. For Shire, Elysian Heights is not so different. It is where he has built a wonderful life—doing what he loves, surrounded by those he loves—creating countless objects of joy for the wider world.

On the heels of his recent solo show at Jeffrey Dietch in LA, aptly titled Rumpus Room, and in celebration of his contribution to the Design Miami.LA campaign, we sat down with Shire to learn more about the relationship between his devil-may-care character, his deep sense of home, and his enduring legacy for humorous, happy-making, hybrid creativity.

Wava Carpenter/You’ve often mentioned your parents, especially your mother, in interviews. And you’ve continued to live and work in Echo Park, where you were born and raised. How is this rootedness reflected in your work? What is the relationship between your practice and this place that you have so deeply inhabited?

Peter Shire/Echo Park-Elysian Heights is my heart, my soul, my animus, my postillion—the place I swing around is my pivot and anchor. In this place, the air, the music, the people, the streets are a vibration that courses through my cells and both overtly and inadvertently influences my life and work. I’ve gone around the world and brought back ideas and images and mixed the two. Elysian Heights is the glue that binds the mix together.

WC/Your work is often framed, particularly within design history discourse, as rebellious—as a defiance of the strictures of bourgeois taste and slick commercialism. Do you agree with this characterization? How would you like your work to be regarded 100 years from now?

PS/ What’s missing from this narrative is that socioeconomic and cultural factors are really more dynamic than design [traditionally concedes], and this is where what we often refer to as art enters into the discourse of industrial production and merchandising. I hope to be regarded 100 years from now as an interesting and dynamic representative of my generation and of the American scene.

WC/You’ve not only had a front row seat to but also helped propel the rise of LA as a major center for contemporary creative culture, one that draws the eyes of the world. From your vantage, what has been gained and what has been lost through the course of this transformation?

PS/As for LA as a center of contemporary culture, et cetera: “The grass is greener, but it’s still gotta be mowed.”

WC/With a unique and successful career that spans more than five decades and engages a range of media, expressions, and typologies, what accomplishments are you most proud of today? What aspects of your practice bring you the most joy?

PS/There is pride, amazement, and satisfaction, because I’ve survived and managed to be in my own studio for 50+ years. When I started, I hoped to do this. Now, I have hope and enthusiasm that there are things yet to do—and I’ll be able to do them. I’ll survive to do them.

Samuel Coleridge Taylor said, “Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve, And Hope without an object cannot live.” That ongoing hope and feeling of hope is what brings me the most joy.