Adelle Lutz about The Wedding Party
The Dressed Objects began when David Byrne, my husband, came to me one day and said that he had an idea for a group of pieces and would I want to sit down and go over it with him. We had collaborated in the past morphing in and out of each other’s projects with ideas, directives and manual labor but it had , in fact, been a while since we’d worked mano a mano on anything. "Sure, let’s sit down". He began to do thumbnail sketches as he spoke about a collection of objects which would need to be dressed. A lightbulb, a cigar, a vase of flowers, a table, a chair, silverware … the list continued to grow. Words were mentioned-- "ecclesiastical", "candomble"*, and "religious relic". David wanted these pieces to have that position of honor or power that one sees in places of worship where pilgrims make their way to visit a saint’s thumbnail or a prophet’s earlobe. The ordinary revered. An elevation of the everyday. I worked on these ideas and gathered the items to be dressed. I played with wrapping each object that had a dress in layers and layers of muslin; a bit like a mummy. I’m not sure why but it felt right at the time. In retrospect, all that time wrapping and stitching layers of muslin made the object more like a body to me. As I tend to work very slowly and need a long gestation period; this gave me time to live with the pieces and observe them. During this stage, I tried to really follow David’s original idea but then it had to evolve a bit differently simply because each object now seemed to have his or her own character or personality and that had to be brought into account. For example- La Madre began as a chest of drawers that was to be panniered and very regal. Candomble forever. First, hoops were built and the fabrics were draped. But it wasn’t "her". Then, a beautiful old rayon was found and I began to make another dress. And it still wasn’t her. The green/grey wool plaid is her. It took four dressings to get it right but eventually she seemed truly to be her definitive self. As for La Madrasta, which is a radio, I just couldn’t get this one to keep her clothes on. She refused to be dressed as a relic. She seemed to throw off everything that I tried on her until I finally understood that she was asking to be left alone in her slip. Defiant and willful. A touch of Anna Magniani. Years ago, when I first came to New York City, it was to study acting. Classes taken as a student of the great acting teacher, Stella Adler, really called into play here. She always said "Leave yourself out of it. You’re a bore darling, you’re a bore." Stella taught us to look at a character’s position not only in the play, but in the context of history and archetypes. We learned to ask questions — What was the social structure? How would this person vote? Is he religious? What does she like to eat? What does he smell like? What are her hobbies? And on and on. This acting training, which I relay on when I’m designing costumes on a film or play also seemed appropriate for our collaboration on these sculptures. In fact, the word "sculpture" now doesn’t quite feel correct. They are beings. And so bit by bit the group took life and soon it became obvious that some of them were related and part of a wonderfully dysfunctional family that we knew intimately.
* candomble is an Afro-Brazilian religion
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