An unemployed man just stole money from the Salvation Army collection bucket to feed his ill infant. Is this a right or wrong action? Is it a good or evil deed? Filing actions, symbols and thoughts into these broad often biased categories seems to be innate for humans.

Artist Marshall Hyde confronts his audience in a variety of styles on this level through his glass-blown six wall reliefs entitled The Sacred and the Profane.

The work questions arts historical and modern-day rights and wrongs, Hyde said. It is an old theme that I thought was whimsical.

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Mr. Hyde’s art, which is being displayed at the Associated Artists Gallery in Carbondale from Jan. 16 to Feb. 10, is progressive. To some, the works may appear finished, but Hyde will continue to decorate the bland white wooden cases that serve host to his colorful and physically distorted glass goblets. It is this act of going against traditional gallery mores of toying with the finished product for the month it will be on display that makes Hyde’s work especially unique.

Hyde utilizes traditional venetian color techniques but adds a twist to it by using the hues of 60s pop culture. Traditionally, the venetian glass work, which dates back the the10th century, has been recognized as a craft that produces a useful product.

I take the traditional venetian goblet form and tweak it or make fun of it, Hyde said. The craft is decorated and twisted from what tradition has intended.

The combination of the glass pieces and what Hyde refers to as the pure, modern idealist forms represented by the plain white encasings exemplify the sacred and profane. The long, twisted body-like shapes which make up the necks of the goblets spawn ideas about sexuality from the viewer. Contemplating the ideas that came to be the soft, smooth curves which highlight and accentuate the glass portion of the art is risque.

Whatever you do, you are going to break someones rules, Hyde said. I wanted to have fun with that.

Hyde’s wife Caitlin also has two exhibits on display at the gallery. . On the Useful of Demons a group of seven drawings that takes a humorous look at the voices of dissent in our head. It explores similar good and evil themes.

Fairy tales and myths are systems of looking at good and evil in our culture, Mrs. Hyde said. These are sometimes set-up as didactic systems.

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The pencil sketchings of fairy-like figures are dark and contrast well with the colorfully painted borders surrounding the elaborate art. The decor surrounding the demons are a personification of the beauty and decoration people associate with good things.

Her other work on display, Artificial Artifacts, is a group of five works based on ideas of female imagery she began exploring in her M.F.A. thesis at SIUC. The dismembered and abstractly altered Barbie dolls challenge the viewer to treat these voodoo-doll-style figures as artifacts of our modern-day culture.

One of our most ancient artifacts of the human race is of a female figurine, Hyde said in reference to the Venus of Willendorf, a 25,000-year-old, fat, round artifact found in Austria.

The earthly tones of color and variously bound figurines that Hyde presents give the work a genuine feeling of an artifact. To the artists benefit, they leave it up to the fans to decide what powers the works align themselves with rather than making the decision for themselves.

Present Musings:an exhibition of recent works by Caitlan and Marshall Hyde will be on display from Jan. 16 to Feb.10 at Associated Artists Gallery located at 213 S. Illinois. An artists reception will be held on Jan. 19 during 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.