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Visual Arts

Dye selling his soul for art

With a series of ice cream-themed watercolor and ink illustrations, Scott Dye has found an obvious link between the devil and the frozen confection. This one is titled “Bill the Butcher Left His Cleaver in His Ice Cream for You.”

When you put it all in one place, the work of the devil really lives down to its shady reputation. And Durango artist Scott Dye has done his best to put it all in one place.

That place is the ever-enigmatic Studio &, and Dye’s show is called “The Devil is in the Details.”

“The devil, or any representation of evil for that matter, has had his hand in the proverbial cookie jar since the beginning of human development,” Dye says of the mostly whimsical exhibit.

Tops on my wishlist is Dye’s collection of small framed “portraits” of the weapons used by presidential assassins and those who would be. The .41-caliber derringer used by John Wilkes Booth to shoot Abraham Lincoln, Lee Harvey Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and the twin revolvers used by Leon Czolgosz (a .32 Iver Johnson) and Charles Guiteau (a nasty .44-caliber British Bulldog) to off William McKinley and James Garfield, respectively.

No less interesting is a rendering of the pistol used by Richard Lawrence in 1835 in the first presidential assassination attempt – Andrew Jackson beat the man with his cane when the gun misfired – and a TNT plunger detonator, representative of an Argentinian plot to kill Herbert Hoover in 1928.

Dye also accuses and reaffirms the charges of several high-profile musicians thought to have made deals with the devil to secure their fame. Dye singled out four such performers with watercolor and ink drawings of their signature instruments: Niccolo Paganini’s violin, Varg Vikernes’ guitar and Robert Johnson’s even more famous guitar. (Vikernes is a Norwegian black metal rocker who famously burned a string of old, old churches in retaliation against Christians. Scary cat.)

There’s also a bra, Dye’s tongue-in-cheek salute to Katy Perry and her illogical rise to superstardom.

“The objective of much of this show is to place a lens to the little things that have been associated with the devil’s work, whether ‘real’ or perceived, and that have altered the course of history,” he said.

ted@duranoherald.com

If you go

The Devil is in the Details: New artwork by Scott Dye, 5 to 9 p.m. today at Studio &, 1027 Main Ave. For more information, visit www.anddurango.com.



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