Meet our Founder, Australian artist Rikki Day.

A: Thankyou :) My Career kind of found me I feel. I’ve always painted and have been very creative however I didn’t begin painting as a career until just after my son was born. We were having a pretty wild ride in that first year of being parents and I very deeply needed an outlet so I began hobby painting. I shared a bit of my work online and the demand grew so I put my energy into growing a business from it. I’m quite passionate about business strategy and marketing so that side of the work was just as interesting to me so it evolved fairly easily and felt right to be balancing those passions with mothering at the time. I now work as a full time artist and it’s a brilliant career, I adore it. 

A: Yes it absolutely is. Growing up my mumma was a professional surfer so needless to say we spent a huge amount of time at beaches up and down the east coast. It’s just one of those things that is a huge part of our family story and a deep respect and appreciation for the sea was deeply ingrained in us all our lives. I’m also very inspired by life’s moments, all of my works tie back to gratitude for a certain life moment, be it expanding the family, conversations with friends over wine, travel etc. I like to create art that captures those moments, to remind us of the beauty they hold. 

A: One day per week I have “mummy Otto day” which I devote to hanging out with my 4 year old, the other 4 weekdays I’m between ave.nue101 and my art. Those days consist of anything and everything from packing orders, painting artworks, designing homewares, marketing, finance, business planning to learning. Basically wearing all the hats haha. 

A: My co-founder Tess and I just adore each other and have such an appreciation for each other’s minds and creativity. We were dreaming up ideas for home pieces one day over a bowl of chippies and we just thought, hey, this would be an amazing thing to share with the world. ave.nue101 began really organically though a sheer passion for design and the opportunity to have a brand to express our creativity together seemed perfect. And so it began. 

A: Yeah, Something that I thought may be tricky but has actually been super easy. I think it comes down to how clear our branding is for ave.nue101. We had a very strong vision for the brand and a wonderful and incredibly talented friend Serrin who is in graphics and branding really understood our vision and solidified the branding for us. Thanks to that it’s now quite clear to me when I’m conceptualising an idea which business it would be best for. It’s become a fairly obvious line in the sand between the two now, so that helps. 

A: Tonal, personalised, lived-in. 

A: Eep tricky one, especially because I love my jobs so much that my “fun” and my work intersect a lot but I’m working on that so I don’t keep seeing sundays roll around and feel like I’ve not had any down time haha. Family time is pretty clear and saturdays and sundays organically fall into that category. I think the best way to balance it out is to schedule it out. As un sexy as that sounds because we all love some spontaneity but with so much on, pencilling in time for fun activities, catch ups with friends, nights away etc helps so much. 

A: Ohh the ideas are endless. That’s one of the things I adore so much about this brand.  Because the foundation was laid upon the brand being an “avenue” for Tess and I to create it’s been left so open ended and we feel like we can take it in any direction we choose. We had been working on it for two years prior to launch day so there is soo much in the pipelines. The next few releases for this year however have me particularly excited there are some really stunning things coming out. I see a very long future for ave.nue101 and I look forward to being part of its evolution. 

A: Ha! No surprises here, my favourite piece is by far the oyster, closely followed by the Sardines but in saying that I do adore them all.

View the full art series here.