Dustin Shuler
Dustin Shuler (August 17, 1948 – May 4, 2010) was an American pop art sculptor and mixed-media artist, best known for a 1989 piece called Spindle, a 50-foot steel spike with eight cars impaled on it that became emblematic of the city of Berwyn, Illinois, where it was installed for two decades in the parking lot of a popular shopping mall. Most of Shuler's major works consisted of outdoor art installations, and the majority of his sculptures used elements of consumer-goods detritus. Early life Shuler was born in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, on August 17, 1948. He worked at the Westinghouse Electric Corp factory during the day while taking night classes in art at Carnegie Institute of Technology, now known as Carnegie Mellon University. Shuler left Westinghouse in 1971 to devote more time to his art career. In 1973 at the age of 25, he moved to southern California, where he worked for a while as a welder in an aircraft engine factory before becoming an artist full-time. In 1979, he married Karen Zindler. Career and works Shuler's fascination with using car bodies in large artworks began in Santa Ana in 1978 with the installation Tutankhamun Disguised as a Volkswagen Bus, which