To celebrate Valentine's Day, Seattle visual artists Roy McMakin and Jeffry Mitchell, and New York performing artist Suzzy Roche, a member of the Wooster Group, a solo artist, and one-third of the band the Roches, will perform in the pavilion at Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park at 7:00 pm February 14.

They've never performed together before, and the event came about when SAM asked McMakin to give a standard artist's talk about his sculpture near the water's edge in the park, Love & Loss. The piece consists of cast concrete benches, a sidewalk-like pathway, a small, circular reflecting pool, and a double-trunked crabapple tree that spell out the words "love" and "loss." Jutting up from the middle is a red neon ampersand.

McMakin told the museum he had about 90 seconds of interesting commentary to deliver about the piece—but in this conversation at the chilly site of Love & Loss with Stranger art writer Jen Graves, McMakin, Mitchell, and Roche reveal quite a lot, even when they're being guarded, about their attempts to be vulnerable, to balance romanticism and naturally occurring cynicism, to make art that "wears its heart on its sleeve," McMakin says.

This is a conversation you might expect to hear from Mitchell and Roche. But listen for the McMakin surprises.

^{A mockup of Roy McMakin's Love & Loss (2005-2006) at the Olympic Sculpture Park. The installation is still unfinished but can be seen through a fence near the water.}

^{Jeffry Mitchell's Tulips (1989), engraving with china colle and watercolor}

^{Suzzy Roche (rightside up) performing the Wooster Group's House/Lights with Ari Fliakos (upside down) and Kate Valk.}

Hear the Roches' songs for free on their MySpace page, including music from Moonswept, their album coming out in March.