Daria, who has been the heart and the jumpstart of my life in Berlin, is moving to Hamburg.
They warn you when you come to live here, it’s a transient city, you make friends and then they move away. We haven’t seen that much, luckily, because most of our community loves Berlin like we love Berlin. Not Daria, though. Daria, who is from Moscow, hates Berlin like I hated San Francisco, being from New York. It’s completely hilarious how much her disdain for the way Berlin does city is like my mine for SF. She even makes the same face I do.
I have always understood that Daria’s talent is too big for Berlin, where nobody has any money.
I want her to have the massive success and fame she deserves even more than I want her to be near me. I want her to get to live in a city she loves, like I do.
She likes Hamburg, and moreover, she works with a tattoo studio there that is the right scale for her exploding career. She needs a platform that suits her expanding clientele. So that’s right, and as it should be, and I know I will see her when she comes to Berlin to see clients, because she’ll be sleeping on our couch!
As we are closing on the date she and her partner leave for their new city, we are making time for a portrait.
Like the portraits of our Bay Area loved ones that hang all over the house, a portrait of Daria will be a companion and comfort. We had talked about doing a glamorous one too, but with time growing short the highest priority was this vision of her. Like a Russian ballerina witch ninja vampire, absorbed in creating – she is editing photos on her iPad. Like I have watched her so many times in so many cafes all over the city that I came to know with her. Our next sitting is in April, and hopefully that will finish it; if not, we’ll finish it when she’s sleeping on our couch!
Daria’s website, her tatto insta and her art insta.
Here are some of our adventures together over the last three years.
Our first art collab, which was my first Berlin art collab and art trade
And more about how great that was!
When we did Berlin Graphic Days Night Market
When she called me on overworking hands
The house reveal after our first Joint Daria&Dan Birthday Party
My first watercolor in 25 years, live drawing with Daria at Altes Finanzamt
When I had the courage to try watercolors again because of her, at Drink and Draw.
When we made watercolors in Schöneberg
One of the days when I had bad grief and PTSD and Daria made all the difference
The frame I made for her moth drawing
On the way to a secret cemetery cafe
How I had my first Berlin art show at her tattoo studio
Daria says the right thing, always
When she did the lettering for my She-Krampus
When we drew Amanda Palmer backstage
one of the times we went to the Apple store for her damn phone
When my gothic skull was a little passe, but there’s no pleasing the young
Life drawing happytimes at ESDIP in 2017
Life drawing at the Drink and Draw Midnight Salon
At the Women’s Halloween Art Salon
When she took all the photos at the Dollhouse Lab reveal party
Live-drawing Miss Natasha at our A(RT)fair event
When we went to Life Drawing at Lydia’s
Where I talk about how having a true peer forces me to grow
How her giving me a personal doll-wigging workshop enabled me to finish a years-old project
Drawing Daria tattooing in the Friechrichshain studio, with friends
I drew Daria 
Luckily, in a moment of foresight, I photocopied the original line drawing.
The scan is dark, because the photocopy picked up the midtone of the kraft paper, and I hadn’t finished drawing Daria’s tattoo machine. Someone with better digital editing skills than me can sort out the values, prolly.