Adrienne Tarver had told herself she would never date a fellow artist. Then she met Jason Karolak, an abstract painter, on an art gallery crawl.
Adrienne Elise Tarver was standing on the sidewalk outside Heroes Gallery in downtown Manhattan when Jason Alexander Karolak wandered over, setting in motion the collapse of her romantic boundaries.
It was September 2021, and Ms. Tarver, an interdisciplinary artist, was there to meet a friend who had arranged a six-person gallery crawl that included the now-closed art space. Mr. Karolak, also an artist, was part of the group.
"As soon as they strolled up, I was like, 'Hmm, who is he?'" she said.
Mr. Karolak was the only person there she didn't know, and her better judgment told her to keep it that way. Early in her career, she had made a promise to herself not to date fellow artists.
But that evening, when the group stopped for dinner at a now-closed location of the Italian restaurant Serafina, her better judgment went out the window. "I made an effort to sit across from him," she said.
Ms. Tarver's works include photos, drawings and paintings. Like Mr. Karolak, whose paintings are abstract and often geometric, she has a master's degree in painting and drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Ms. Tarver, 40, spent her early years in Marietta, Ga., before moving with her family to Lindenhurst, Ill., when she was 9. She received a bachelor of fine arts in painting from Boston University.
Mr. Karolak, 51, grew up in Rochester, Mich., and earned a bachelor of fine arts in painting from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Seeing the fallout from breakups between artist couples she knew inspired Ms. Tarver's personal ban. "It gets messy where the people can't be in the same room together," she said. "And it's a small art world."
After two glasses of wine at Serafina, both Ms. Tarver and Mr. Karolak were sensing their dinner conversation had veered beyond friendly. That presented a dilemma for Mr. Karolak. He was attracted to her but worried, he said, that "if I keep talking to her she's going to be like, 'He's hitting on me,' and turn to her friend."
But that never happened. Instead, they left Serafina together, the only two at their table who were headed to Brooklyn. Ms. Tarver, who lived in Atlanta at the time, was staying with a friend in the Greenpoint neighborhood while looking for a place to live in New York. Mr. Karolak lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
"It got a little flirty on the train," Ms.Tarver said. That night, they connected on Instagram. Two weeks later, after several rounds of DMs, they met in Manhattan for more art browsing, this time alone. A few days later, they scheduled a repeat.
"Then it was like, 'OK, we've got to turn this up,'" Mr. Karolak said.
It was mid-October when he asked her to dinner. She wasn't sure their last two encounters had been dates. And because he was an artist, she wasn't sure she wanted them to be.
But when she got to Saraghina, a Neapolitan pizzeria in Bed-Stuy, he was wearing a sports coat. “It was clear we had both put a little more effort into dressing up,” she said. “It was signaling date.”
Their first kiss that night, however, did not signal full speed ahead. In fact, they agreed to keep things casual until the spring of 2022, when they started having conversations about a relationship.
“She had a whole thing I had to break through,” Mr. Karolak said. “She really vetted me about this artist thing. We had discussions for months.”
But, he added, “I was happy and, I hope, mature enough to have some clarity about it.”
In 2023, Ms. Tarver moved from a home she bought in Bushwick to live with Mr. Karolak, who had moved to Crown Heights. On a hiking trip in July 2024, he found a vista on Mount Taurus in Cold Spring, N.Y., and got down on one knee.
“I knelt down, too,” Ms. Tarver said. “I had never thought about it, but it’s awkward for someone to be down below you.”
They were married on Oct. 4, at the Beaverkill Valley Inn in Livingston Manor, N.Y. Adam Green, a cousin of Mr. Karolak who was ordained by the Universal Life Church for the occasion, officiated a nonreligious ceremony.
Many of their 85 guests were artists who pitched in to make the day memorable. Jason Paradis, a designer and carpenter, built their altar. Kelly Romany, a painter and bookmaker, crafted a book for their vows.
And Ms. Tarver, who said she grew up “the artsy one in a family of makers,” sewed her own wedding dress. Sewing had been a hobby of her mother, Gloria Tarver, who died of complications from Alzheimer’s in 2023.
“She had always wanted to make my dress,” the bride said.