Dustin Shuler

Who was Dustin Shuler?

Dustin Shuler was an American sculptor, best known for a 1989 piece called the Spindle, which consisted of a 40-foot spike with eight cars impaled on it.

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, which is now known as Carnegie Mellon University.

Shuler also unveiled "Pinned Butterfly" in 1982, in which he pinned a Cessna 150 to the four-story American Hotel in Los Angeles using a giant steel nail. More recently, Shuler created "Dance" in 2008 in Sarasota, Florida, in which twelve cars were placed in a circle, with their fronts positioned towards the sky. He moved to southern California in 1973 to focus on his art career.

Dustin Shuler died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Inglewood, California, on May 4, 2010, at the age of 61. He was survived by his wife, Karen Zindler-Shuler, whom he had married in 1979; brother, Terry; and a sister, Lynn Seng.