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Perhaps it's not without coincidence that Valentine's Day falls in the middle of winter. After all, a cold night has long been on the short list of reasons that draw couples closer together.

So it was upon pondering this that Erin O'Neill, curator of the alternative Downtown art space Artists Upstairs, came upon the idea some time ago to put together an exhibition of artworks by couples. Not works that already existed, but works that would have to be created by couples -- and not necessarily couples who were both professional artists.

"It was more interesting for me, in fact, to have one of the couple not be a professional artist, or be an artist at all, even," O'Neill says.

So he called nearly every couple he could think of who would add up to an interesting mix, ranging from couples married for decades to newly formed couples, and each from different social and economic backgrounds. The result is "Equipoise," an exhibition of collaborative artworks by 11 very different couples that has been up since the beginning of the year.

The idea going into this project, says O'Neill, was for each couple to draw on their respective strengths as a couple and explore what those strengths are, potentially elevating them more than either of them could alone, knowing full well that they would be exposing each of their vulnerabilities, personal sacrifices and acceptance of their partners' baggage along the way.

What he got back was some surprising collaborative pieces that are more telling to the couples themselves than what each could possibly say about the other.

"Jeanne is a dirt person," Oakland resident Dale McNutt says of his wife of 35 years. "I'll find her sitting in the dirt in the middle of the garden at four or five o'clock in the afternoon or something like that."

Looking over their piece "Soil = Pigment," both Dale and Jeanne can't help but see each other in the three painted and collaged panels they have put together, each holding such diverse yet related objects as a spade, garden hose, hat and gardening dress.

At first glance, the piece might seem to be all about Jeanne, who has had a love for gardening as long as she can remember. Her 60- by 90-foot shade garden behind their Oakland home is a "riot of texture," Dale says. But soon that riot will give way to new digs as the couple prepares to relocate to the Uptown section of the city, where they will live above the Fifth Avenue studio that is home to Dale's design firm, SoHo Invention Inc.

Looking closer at their piece, one will start to notice Dale's designer influence almost immediately. For starters, there is a seed pod-like logo that Dale designed which runs throughout the piece. It's even included in the pattern on the dress. And the layout of Jeanne's painted versions of hostas, hydrangeas and Japanese ferns on one panel is set up in a grid pattern laid out by Dale, who also paints.

"My soil has always been pigment that yields paint, that yields poetry," Dale has written in a statement that accompanies the piece. "And only recently, late in life, am I tending my 'garden' with the same confidence and curiosity that Jeanne brings to hers."

O'Neill says one repetitive theme that runs through the exhibition is that, when each couple started on their respective piece, they did so with very specific opinions about each other, only to realize they are more like each other than they ever imagined.

"All of them had thought that either the other one was messier, or cleaner, or whatever. And, after exposing these things in their lives, almost every one of the couples realized how alike they were," O'Neill says.

That was definitely the case with artists Roger Laib and Maritza Mosquera, who each took photographs of each other's personal belongings and items of everyday use that fill their Highland Park home, such as toothbrushes, shoes -- even each other's side of the bed -- for their photo installation "His-Hers."

Carolina Loyola-Garcia and Andres Tapia-Urzua took that idea even further and photographed each other sleeping, and awakening, on the respective sides of their bed.

On display in the middle of the photographs is a projection of a video work they created titled "Membrana." Both video artists were born and raised in Chile, and the work is a reflection of their lives together since they met and married here in Pittsburgh eight years ago.

"The video is supposed to be sort of a dream. Sometimes it's pleasant; sometimes it's nightmarish, but it tells a lot about our life," Loyola-Garcia says.

With two daughters, 14 and 3, she says, "Actually, what really triggered the whole idea for the video was this state of living in limbo that you experience when you have children, at least for the first few years where you are very tired all the time and you are very weak.

"For me, at least, that's how I experienced it. It was very dreamy. I felt like I was floating, not really down to earth. So, we tried to re-create that."

It's been said that politics makes strange bedfellows, but not for Gary Huck and Tavia Lafollette. Huck, an editorial cartoonist, and Lafollette, a teacher, political activist and puppeteer, were recently wed in this gallery, where Lafollette also happens to be the director.

On one wall they display various cartoons and puppets that were each inspired by the other over the past few years, as well as one large assemblage piece titled "Facets." Among the variety of things that make up the piece are a switch-blade comb, baby spoons, a miniature Mexican skeleton diorama, a plastic Nixon figurine and music box mechanism that plays the Socialist anthem "Internationale."

"They're just bits and pieces of us," Lafollette says. "It's just different stuff that we've collected and given to each other. We had this whole long-distance relationship that we had for so many years, and we sent each other silly stuff back and forth."

Also included in the piece are a Mickey Mouse watch and a Spiro Agnew watch, about which Husk says, "The day Spiro Agnew died, I set the watch and let it run down, and I haven't touched it since."

The remaining works on view are just as interesting and include a piece by a dancer and hip-hop DJ, a window installation by a multi-media artist and neurologist, and a re-creation of a breakfast nook from the home of an artist and architect.

Each in its own way is as telling about the couple as it is about the individuals that make up this most intriguing show.

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