Husband, wife collaborate on one-time installation

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Oct 18, 2009

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He remembers his grad school days, when his artwork occupied one gallery and his wife’s the other.

His room was filled with interesting paintings, but people were more attracted to the next room, the one designed to look like a theater highlighting unusual objects.

Were they animals, the objects? Well, they could have been. They were interesting, nevertheless.

“And I would find myself just standing there, wringing my hands,” Aaron Parazette said. “So I said, ‘From now on, we’re working together.’”

He laughs. It’s not always this way. Sometimes Parazette has his own exhibitions, and Sharon has hers.

That’s his wife, Sharon Engelstein. She’s joining Parazette in staging the exhibition DIAD: site specific work by sharon engelstein and aaron parazette at the LSU School of Art’s Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Art Gallery in the Shaw Center of the Arts.

The exhibit is as the title suggests — site specific. Meaning it’s been designed specifically for the Glassell Gallery space.

And also as indicated by the title, it’s DIAD. That’s as in, done in a day. Hey, it would work in a text message.

It works here, too, because this exhibit was planned and designed ahead of time, then installed in a day. On this particular day, in fact. The exhibit will open the next day.

“My wife would usually be here, but she’s still in Houston,” Parazette said. “We have a sick child.”

But adding her piece to the space is going to be no big deal. Engelstein already knew the room’s measurements, even the location of the electrical outlet on one of the center columns.

That’s probably the most important part of her installation process, because Engelstein’s sculptures are known as forced air inflatables.

“We have a fan running the whole time to keep it inflated,” Parazette said. “It’s like those inflatable cowboys and gorillas you see at car dealerships. The same company that makes them makes Sharon’s sculptures.”