- Background -
Dustin Howearth was brought up in New Zealand, and came to Australia when he was 10. During his childhood in New Zealand, he was in trouble a lot: he pulled apart vacuum cleaners, radios and other appliances. He speculates that this is where his fascination started for how things worked.
Growing up in Australia, He wasn’t the best at school. However, He always had very high marks for science and manual arts – top of the class. He achieved the 2nd highest mark in QLD in a science competition when I was in Year 11. I left school at the end of Year 11 and started a tiling apprenticeship which lead to making mosaics. For extra creative stimulation, He began a lot of research into bronze castings which he started off making in his backyard with his own inventions of furnaces and foundry work which led him to getting his first real art job with Artbusters, a Queensland based company which produced artwork worldwide.
Dustin was lucky to travel the world with Artbusters making various sculptures, mosaics and sceneries (garden scapes, mazes etc.). Due to his personal situation he had to leave the company and decided to start carving stone sculptures. During this period he was invited to sell his sculptures at Paddington Markets in Sydney, which lead onto meeting people in the film industry (including Sean Cassidy), and he soon started working on prop making in films. Dustin worked his way up to become the leading hand for miniatures and fibreglassing, working for Warner Bros (Mission Impossible, Superman Returns, and a lot more), Fox Studios and Channel 10 (Big Brother Friday Night Live).
Dustin also worked on his own business “Sculpture House”, selling stone carvings to nurseries and landscaping stores. Due to the high demand, he couldn’t keep up with the work and closed down the business.
From here Dustin began to work for myself as a handyman/tiler which eventually became monotonous. Out of the blue, he was contacted by Queensland University of Technology who called him to offer a position in the fine arts department as a studio technician. Dustin went on to work in this position for 18 months, helping students with the technical aspects of creating artworks. Unfortunately he broke his hand and had to leave the university while his hand healed – which brings us to the present!