Try this on for size: Nick Cave's Soundsuits at SAM

The bear, which has a fondness for stripes and pastels, is wearing sweaters from J. Crew, the Gap and other popular labels. It looms a good 8 feet above you as you enter "Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth," the new exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. And while you wouldn't want to meet its real-life counterpart in nature, here in the gallery this fabric-clad creature is clearly a benevolent spirit.

As for the vaguely humanoid figures arrayed behind it, they're more ambiguous, striking notes that range from eerie menace to buoyant whimsy.

"Meet Me at the Center of the Earth" is an exuberant wonderland of a show, a rhythmic cornucopia of costume invention. Almost all the pieces in it can be worn and set into motion. While museum visitors can't try them on for themselves, they can see stylish photographs and lively video of this wearable sculpture in action. If they're lucky, they may even witness an "invasion" of Cave-clad performers in and around Seattle in the coming months.

The Chicago-based Cave (not to be confused with the Australian singer of the same name) calls his creations "Soundsuits." As extravagant and eye-popping as they've grown to be, they started on a more somber note.

"My first Soundsuit was made out of twigs," Cave writes. "The initial concept came from the Rodney King incident and the Los Angeles riots in 1992." Sitting in a Chicago park, he found himself "thinking about the feelings that I was dealing with as a black male."

Then he looked on the ground and found a twig.

By the time he was done, he'd constructed a suit that entirely covered him and creaked and rattled as he moved. Like a coat of armor, he says, it embellished the body while protecting the wearer from "outside culture."

Cave's creations, made in collaboration with colleagues at his Chicago studio, have grown less defensive and more ecstatic over the past two decades. All are composed of found materials: hooked rugs, figurines, toys, unspooled cassette tape, hair dyed in outlandish colors and every variety of button, sequin and bead.

Cave, a former dancer with Alvin Ailey, finishes every piece before trying it on to see how it sounds and moves. He draws on a circle of Chicago dancers to put the costumes to the test, too. In Seattle, performers from Donald Byrd's Spectrum Dance Theater and Cornish College of the Arts will bring them to life in surprise appearances around town. Check the museum's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/seattleartmuseum) or on Twitter (@iheartsam) for clues as to when and where these "invasions" will take place.

Cave, a soft-spoken but sharply focused man in his early 50s, was in Seattle this week to oversee the staging of the show. At a media preview, he spoke of the power that Soundsuits can exert over their wearers.

Has he ever seen someone put on a costume and have no idea how to move in it?

"Oh, yeah," he says. "And it's not that they don't know how to move. What happens is they haven't surrendered to the transformation."

He gives a demonstration of the sudden, jerky, faux-tribal moves a dancer might try upon first donning the costume. Then he explains that key to finding your fit with the costume and tapping into its power is a "willingness to surrender, to move into this other being, this other way of existing and considering."

Cave is continually on the lookout for costume materials. Whenever he travels, he makes room in his schedule "to do research," as he puts it, "and see what's out there." That involves scouring secondhand shops, antique malls, flea markets — "all of it, not with any sort of clear idea of what I need, but just being open."

Another branch of his "research" is seeing what choreographers and dancers do with his Soundsuits.

"It's really left up to them," he says. "I want them to look at it as a performance lab. And me, too. So when I have an encounter with an 'invasion,' I'm also learning more and more about the potential of the work."

Does he have a huge warehouse overflowing with found items for potential projects? It's easy, after all, to picture an Aladdin's cave of hand-me-down treasures.

Apparently not.

"You'd be surprised," he says. "My studio's very empty. I get what I need."

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com