Jerri Allyn Messages to the Public: A Lesbian Bride

Jerri Allyn (b. 1954, Patterson, NJ) asks the question: “Who is this monument perched on an elegant cake usually next to a groom who can now be next to a lesbian bride at alternative lifestyle weddings?” The question appears on the screen in two-word intervals shown in conjunction with a wedding cake. As the message unfolds, the various layers of wedding cake are revealed. The final frame shows the “wedding cake brides” perched atop the wedding cake and flanked by white wedding bells. The final exclamation “A Wedding Cake Bride!” answers the question and ends Allyn’s message.

A Lesbian Bride is part of Allyn’s project American Dining: A Working Woman’s Moment, a multidimensional artwork installed throughout the United States. Allyn programs diner booth jukeboxes with a sound collage of stories and music about work, money, and food, and designed a set of four placemats based on traditional “fun and games” placemats. This message is taken from her placemat entitled Name That Dame, Who Are These Famous Food Women?

Messages to the Public formed a key part of the Public Art Fund’s long-term commitment to media-based artworks. Running from 1982 to 1990, the show featured a series of artists’ projects created specifically for the Spectacolor board at Times Square.

As Russell Miller from Ohio newspaper The Toledo Blade explained in his article on February 19, 1984, “every month, a different artist presents a 30-second animation on the Spectacolor light board—an 800-square-foot array of 8,000 red, white, blue, and green 60-watt bulbs that dominates the Times Square vista. The spot is repeated more than 50 times a day for two weeks, wedged into a 20-minute loop of computer-animated commercials.

“Jane Dickson, a painter, was working for Spectacolor, Inc. as an ad designer and computer programmer when, three and a half years ago, she first thought to use the light board to display noncommercial art.

“‘I picked that title,’ she said of Messages to the Public, ‘because I thought the propaganda potential from this project was terrific.’ The board, she noted, was regularly used for ‘commercial propaganda.’

“Dickson sought help from the Public Art Fund, an organization based here and dedicated to taking art out of the galleries and placing it in the city’s streets and parks.”

Project Director of the Public Art Fund Jessica Cusick explained, “We’re trying to do art that’s timely, has a message, is visually potent and is trying to deal with the fine line dividing fine art and commercial art.”