Dustin Shuler
Albatross VI, 1997
Stainless steel, aluminum, lead, gold leaf, fiberglass
Museum Purchase in honor of Dr. Eugene M. Hughes
… A lot of people don't get my stuff when they first see it. They think art has to be beautiful, although I think that [it] is beautiful. But the quote is beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And people think art is in the eye of the beholder. Well, now, it isn't. Art is based on intent of the artist. It doesn't make a good art and doesn't have to be beautiful art. But it's still art. It doesn't mean you have to like it.
Dustin Shuler
Shuler’s sculpture exposes his abiding fascination with machines and transportation. Shuler worked his way through art school at Carnegie Mellon University at a Westinghouse Electric factory, and then spent several years as a welder in an aircraft engine factory before turning to his art full time. He’s said that he likes transportation and disasters because, “I think they’re romantic and they’re just something that attracts me. Oh yeah, I’m a simple guy, you know, bright shiny things with flashlights.” Shuler often treats machines anthropomorphically (zoomorphically?). He displays the exteriors of cars, which he calls “pelts” pinned to walls like entomological specimens. He pins them to the ground, individually and in stacks. He even used a twenty-foot nail to stick an airplane to the exterior of an old hotel in Los Angeles, and completed a series of paintings of shipwrecks.
However, in Albatross VI, the airplane balances nimbly atop the point of its pin, poised in flight rather than frozen in death. In fact, this wind-driven kinetic sculpture still moves with each slight fluctuation in the air currents. Watch as Albatross completes acrobatic maneuvers, even the occasional 360-degree roll.