The last weekend of February, Sharif Hussein Farrag, a ceramic artist, raced colorful clay rats that he sculpted and placed on motorized vehicles around a sports field outside the Santa Monica Airport.
The performative art piece was part of Frieze Los Angeles, a weekend-long contemporary art show, and Mr. Farrag, dressed in a white racing suit and waving a black and white checkered racing flag, explained to the steady stream of art critics, artists, collectors and spectators that it symbolized the “rat race” of capitalism.
“It was a lot of attention,” said Mr. Farrag, 30, who is currently represented by François Ghebaly, a gallery in Los Angeles, but was doing this piece for the Art Production Fund, which supports public art projects across the country. “I was on display with my art.”
But that was just the beginning of a whirlwind week.
A week later, on March 9, he was at the Eden Garden Bar and Grill, a restaurant in Pasadena, Calif., marrying Alexandra Ann Plzak, 27, his girlfriend since college.
“I went right from this crazy week for my career into this week where all my friends were like, ‘My homie is getting married,’’ he said.
The timing of the wedding was deliberate. “Having it near Frieze meant some of my art friends could stay in town an extra couple of days and join,” Mr. Farrag said.
From the beginning, the couple has always found a way to merge work with love. “This is a repeated thing in our relationship,” said Ms. Plzak, who also has a demanding job as a financial analyst for DAOU Vineyards of Paso Robles, Calif. “There are so many times he is working with clay or doing a show, and I am hanging out or working and doing math or Excel finance five feet away from him for 10 hourlong periods.”
“Everything Sharif sets out to do and be a part of, Alexandra, from what I can see, is there supporting him and behind him and holding it down,” said Chase Hall, a multimedia artist who is friends with Mr. Farrag and attended Frieze and the wedding.
The couple met at a party at the University of Southern California in 2016. Mr. Farrag had just transferred to U.S.C. from Santa Monica College to get a B.F.A. in art (he later got an M.F.A. from U.C.L.A.). Ms. Plzak was studying math and economics.
They ran into each other a few times at other parties before Ms. Plzak invited Mr. Farrag back to her house during one. “We just sat on the couch in the living room and watched that Anthony Bourdain show, ‘Kitchen Confidential,’” she said. “It was kind of intimate.”
“In my college head I was like, ‘I am leaving a party to do this wholesome thing,’” Mr. Farrag said. “I kind of knew at that moment this girl was special.”
A few months later, after multiple hangouts, Ms. Plzak invited Mr. Farrag over to her house once again, this time for shrimp scampi. “That night he asked me to be his girlfriend,” she said. “We hadn’t even kissed.”
“I was just going for it,” Mr. Farrag said. “I really wanted to be with her.”
They had some fun moments in college, like when Mr. Farrag would put Ms. Plzak in a milk crate attached to his bike and take her to Pasta Roma, a buffet-style Italian restaurant. “He bikes like he is driving a car,” meaning fast, she said, laughing, “so I had to hold on.”
But they also worked hard. They spent many late nights in the ceramics studio with Mr. Farrag sculpting and Ms. Plzak crunching numbers on her laptop. “I would look at her computer, and it would be all these formulas and all these numbers, and I respected it so much,” he said. “To me, that was crazy stuff.”
Sometimes Ms. Plzak would get involved in the art. As Mr. Farrag was finishing up his bachelor’s degree, he had a thesis show to which he invited all the galleries he wanted to work with in Los Angeles. The duo spent 72 hours preparing for the show, which explored Mr. Farrag’s family heritage (his father is from Cairo and his mother is from Homs, Syria). “He did these beautiful two-tone hand drawings on the wall,” she said. “I actually painted the ceiling because he is sort of afraid of heights.”
They realized quickly that their divergent interests worked well together.
“They really do complement each other well,” said Beth Plzak, the bride’s mother, who lives in Vail, Colo. “He is an artist, and she is financial, so they have a completely different way of approaching things, but it works,” she said. “My daughter is appreciative of art and passion, and he is so appreciative of someone who can keep track of everything.”
The couple dated steadily for the next three years, even as Mr. Farrag traveled the world doing shows and Ms. Plzak moved to Paso Robles to work for Justin winery, about a four-hour drive away from Los Angeles, where he was living. “I was just living in the bedrooms of people’s houses and focused on working, so it was a good time to be long distance,” Mr. Farrag said.
Ms. Plzak agreed the physical distance helped her master her career. “Corporate finance is already a demanding job, and wine is a super complicated industry because wine has to be aged so you are working with five, six, seven-year financial plans,” she said. “Also, because it’s alcohol and every state gets to make its own laws about how wine gets sold, you can’t just know how it works in the United States. You have to know how it works in every state, every market.”
At the start of the pandemic, they moved in together in Los Angeles, and adopted a miniature pinscher Chihuahua named Miss Sprinkles.
In March 2023, Mr. Farrag popped the question during a dinner at his parents’ house that Ms. Plzak’s parents, who were visiting Los Angeles, also attended.
“My dad looked at me and said, ‘Don’t you have something you want to say?’” Mr. Farrag said. “I stepped in and said to Alexandra’s parents, ‘I really want to marry your daughter.’ Then we both started crying.”
Ms. Plzak liked that the Eden Garden Bar and Grill, the wedding site, held meaning for both of them. As a couple, “we’ve gone there for dinner, we’ve gone there to smoke hookah,” she said.
But it also held a special place in Mr. Farrag’s family history. “We used to go there for family get-togethers like baby showers, breaking of the fast in Ramadan,” said his sister, Habah Farrag, 41.
Their professions aren’t the only way the couple differs. Ms. Plzak grew up in Chicago and Vail to parents born in the United States. She was raised Catholic. Mr. Farrag grew up in Los Angeles and is the son of Middle Eastern immigrants. He was raised Muslim.
The wedding merged elements of both of their backgrounds.
During the ceremony one of Mr. Farrag’s cousins led an Arada, a Syrian wedding tradition where he recites a prayer in Arabic and the congregation repeats it. “The whole crowd was chanting in response, and that was incredibly touching,” said Habah Farrag, Mr. Farrag’s sister.
Ms. Plzak had her father walk her into the ceremony, something that happens in Catholic weddings, but not Muslim weddings. “My dad met me in the women’s bathroom, because that is where I was located,” she said.
During the reception, the crowd hoisted the couple up on chairs, another Arada tradition, and everyone danced around them. “Sharif’s friends from childhood rushed to pick up his chair and Alexandra’s family held her chair,” Ms. Farrag said, adding that she didn’t think the couple’s “smiles couldn’t have been bigger.” The D.J. even brought out a tabla hand drum that some members of Mr. Farrag’s family played.
Many of the artists who were at Frieze, either as participants or spectators, cherished getting a chance to unwind after the hectic festival. “There were a lot of artists there who were part of Sharif’s cohort,” said Ms. Hall, the multimedia artist. “There were older artists he had learned from and mentored and younger artists who he engaged with while he was getting his M.F.A. But there was no market or money or financial talk. The wedding was a day when we showed up with nothing but love.”
“The response to my art, it felt amazing, but it was nothing compared to the week of my wedding,” Mr. Farrag said. “Just to see so many people in my life support the decisions I am making, it was pretty freaking cool.”
On This Day
When March 9, 2024
Where The Eden Garden Bar and Grill, Pasadena, Calif.
Marriage Certificate Copy Two days before the wedding Ms. Plzak’s car got broken into and someone stole their marriage license. “We went to the clerk’s office right after our joint bachelor party to get another one,” Mr. Farrag said. “Who would steal that? But we handled it quickly. It made me happy that we are prepared to handle anything.”
Cake from the Pizza Place “We get takeout from this place two blocks away from our home named Quarter Sheets Pizza, and they randomly have these amazing cakes, so we had the idea to get our cake from there,” Ms. Plzak said. “We chose the Princess Cake, our favorite.”
Champagne and Apple Cider Mr. Farrag’s family doesn’t drink, so they served apple cider alongside champagne at the wedding. “Usually only kids would have apple cider, but we had 75 percent of the people drinking it,” he said. “We had a blended wedding.”
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