Olga (34) has an older brother Neville and parents Irene and Jim, and she studied in Limerick College of Art and Design specialising in ceramics. After college, she spent several years teaching art therapy to underprivileged children, and ceramics to people with special needs. She currently teaches ceramics part-time on the Fibre Art course in the Senior College, Ballyfermot, and teaches art at St Mary's in Rathmines.

Olga decided to set up her own ceramics studio in 1997, providing galleries and retail outlets with her work, and she moved to a home-based studio in Rathmines in 2001.

Her latest work is framed ceramic wall pieces, which combine porcelain with glass and are abstract in depiction. Many of her works have been acquired for private collections and purchased by government bodies. Her first solo exhibition will be held in the Blue Leaf Gallery, Marino, Dublin 3, from 2 to 13 November.

Deirdre (32) lived in Howth with her parents Jack and Angela, and siblings Graham, Karen and John. She went to college in Manchester for four years to study European studies, with a year abroad in Austria, and followed this with three years teaching English in Budapest, Hungary. When she returned to Ireland in 1999, she joined Lindsey Holmes Publicity, and among the projects she works on are albums and tours for top Irish musicians, including U2 and Republic of Loose, exhibitions for artists such as Guggi and Graham Knuttel, TV programmes like You're A Star, and events such as Midlands Festival and the Electric Picnic.

Deirdre on Olga Olga and I grew up around the corner from each other, and I could literally run around to her house in 20 seconds after I finished my homework. We hit it off because we have the same stupid sense of humour, and could make each other laugh over nothing.

We'd walk around Howth for hours and hours as teenagers, sitting on the harbour with our legs over the edge, talking. Olga is two years older than me, and I really looked up to her when I was 14 and thought everything she wore was cool, but when I got to 16 I realised that she was a nerd!

Olga and I went to Galway for the summer together when I left school, and I have to say it was the best summer of my life. When I came back to Ireland in 1999, we got an apartment together on the South Circular Road. It was actually a onebedroomed apartment, but the owner had put up a wall to make it into two tiny bedrooms, at an angle to get a window into each room. We were really happy there, even though Olga used to treat me like a servant! She worked nights and she'd always ask me to run into the shop next door in the morning, and pick up her laundry and get her a packet of chocolate digestives or whatever!

Olga makes me laugh. She's one of the few people that can make me crease up with laughter, and even though we're in our 30s now, as soon as we get together, we revert back to being teenagers. I really don't know what I'd do without her, and we're really honest with each other. Olga lives in a converted cow-house and we just ring up the local Thai takeaway and say "It's the Cow House, " and they know immediately what our order is . . . it's like that episode of Sex and the City.

I'm out a lot because of the nature of my job, but Olga doesn't come to many things because she is so busy at home with her ceramics, but the best times we have are lying on the sofas in our living room, just chatting and messing. She's hugely talented and very single-minded about her art, and I really admire her for it because so many don't stick at it, but Olga has worked in restaurants and at teaching for years to pay for her art. I love her work, and have pieces of everything that she's made, going back to when she was in college.

Olga on Deirdre After Deirdre did her Leaving Cert, I was in college in Limerick and I wanted to go off to Galway for the summer so she came along with me. I was making jewellery and Deirdre was doing hair wraps, and we were like two little nomads, going to all the festivals like Feile. I have really happy memories of us sitting on a rug, with all my jewellery on a bread board, and people queuing down the street to get their hair wraps. We were making so much money because we were doing hundreds of hair wraps every day, and we were only young ones.

Deirdre went off to Manchester and I visited her there a few times, but I didn't get to visit her in Budapest because I never had that much money at the time. She came home every summer and Christmas though, and we'd hang around then. It's funny because when things are going well for me on the man front, they're not for Deirdre, and vice versa, and it has always been that way. She has been my best friend since we were kids, so she knows everything about me and is the friend that I can say anything to . . . she's a great listener and doesn't judge and doesn't plamas me.

I'm quite highly strung . . . people liken me to Monica in Friends . . . and when I'm hyperventilating over something small, Deirdre brings me back down and calms me. My partner Richard is a Sagittarian as well, so when he gets together with Deirdre, they find it easy to wind me up.

Deirdre always invites me to things that she's working on, and I love going to the exhibitions. I don't get to go to a whole lot more than that because I'm always so busy, but you can see how good she is at her job and how well-respected she is. Deirdre is a Sagittarian and she's really sociable, whereas I'm a Cancerian and am a real little home-lover. Our jobs are so very different, because being an artist involves working at home and being very solitary, whereas Deirdre would be off doing really exciting things, like for example, last year, when she went to San Diego for the start of U2's tour there.