berlin drawings 20-22 > friends

This is a portrait of my partner May (right) and her older sister Fee (left). They seem completely unalike, until you watch them interact—the way they cross their arms, their subtle smile, and other nuanced mannerism. Despite marrying in her early twenties, raising four children, and becoming a school teacher and principal, Fee has always managed to remain a free spirit. She and her partner were the first generation to live in occupied houses in the east after the wall came down, and they played in Rock and Roll, Ska, and Jazz bands. They have a large circle of friends and still throw big parties that carry on late into the night (well, they did so until the lockdown). Besides living briefly in Spain and France, they remain Berliner. May chose a very different path. After a year at a professional modern dance college, and some experiences in journalism in Hamburg and Kiev, she became an academic, earning her Ph.D. in Germanistik and becoming a professor in the United States. In her early forties, she married a Jewish American artist, and had one child.