A Los Angeles Itinerary for Art Lovers

Walk around Echo Park

After getting settled in Silver Lake, we met up with Holland Denvir, founder of Los Angeles Design Week/end, to check out the Eastside design scene. This was the third year of LADW, and “the goal is really to share with residents and visitors what’s here locally—artist studios, galleries you might not know about, workshops, wood shops, welding shops. This is a really good picture of what’s happening,” Denvir said. We saw only a tiny slice of it, since this year’s edition spanned more than 15 neighborhoods, with 130 designers, studios, galleries and brands participating. It’s anything but fussy. “We thought, there’s not going to be panels, because panels kind of stop you from discovering and progressing—it’s expert versus novice energy, and we didn’t want that,” explained Meghan McNeer, co-founder and creative director of LADW. “We’re in the Wild West, we’re dreamers. So let’s get people on the street, let’s give them places they already know, but then next door there’s something activated that they can discover.” In Echo Park, we visited several spaces, including Dusk & Sun, a furniture showroom that hosts collaborative exhibitions with independent makers, and the studio of artist Peter Shire, known for boundary-defying work across fine art, ceramics and industrial design. Asked why he gravitates to bright colors and playful patterns, he said, “it’s a mystery. You’re in the middle of doing it, and you know, after a while you’re doing it some more, and then you get known for it and people want you to just do it. You’re constantly trying to figure out where it came from… But seriously, it makes me feel good. It’s really that simple.”