Page 102 - David Bermant Foundation

duSTIn Shuler & dWBBy Justin DiPegoIf it doesn’t move, it’s not art. That’s how David W. Bermant put it. That may sound too definite to you, too limiting, but DWB was not an art scholar, he was an art lover. Surely on the face of it, much of the art he collected and commissioned moves, but a good deal of it only seems to move. The fact that these static pieces find their way into his personal gallery proves that he was right. One way or another, every piece in the collection moved him, from the very first he acquired, a brushed aluminum optical illusion, to the last, a scrap- metal sculpture collage of a cowboy roping a calf.The perfect example of this is “Spindle,” erected in 1989 by the artist, Dustin Shuler. In fact, run an internet search for David Bermant or Dustin Shuler and “Spindle” will be right at the top of the hit list. It didn’t move, but it surely moved a lot of people. In the parking lot of a shopping center in Berwyn, Illinois, stood a fifty-foot spike, run through the bodies of eight cars. The cars stood aloft over this suburb of Chicago for nineteen years, made it into the movie “Wayne’s World,” became a tourist attraction, drew shoppers into the center and fostered love and hate from the community.From the moment it went up, there were people demanding it be taken down. Most of them complained that it was not art. What they didn’t realize was that by making that claim, they were proving themselves wrong. If you asked Shuler, he would put it this way, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and people think art is in the eye of the beholder—well, no it isn’t. Art is based on the intent of the artist.” If the intent is there, that makes it (continued on page 102)101