episode 072: Rachel Rivera & Claire Ouchi of WKNDRS

The Craft with May Globus

Rachel Rivera and Claire Ouchi are as vibrant and joyful in real life as the colourful work they create together as art duo the WKDNRS. After working as applied graphic designers & colour designers at lululemon and Aritzia for a number of years, the two took a leap of faith to start the WKNDRS and also cofounded Holaday together.

They both grew up in Calgary, Alberta, with two very different origin stories. Claire was born into a creative family with a contemporary artist father and a mother who managed a design group. That environment encouraged the creativity within her, and she spent a lot of time making ceramics. Rachel was born four months pre-mature in Cebu, Philippines, and came to Canada after her mother met her Canadian stepfather there, where they fell in love—a meet-cute romance story for the ages. She, too, was artistic as a child and teen, always drawing nature while hanging out with her snowboard crew.

Rachel and Claire had their own meet-cute at Alberta University of the Arts, where they both took visual communications and eventually met in their fourth year, quickly becoming life-long best friends and collaborators. During that time in their lives, they hosted art shows together and started a vintage shop, among other things. A job offer from Aritzia brought Rachel to Vancouver, with Claire arriving shortly after also landing a position at the brand. Eventually, it felt like time to follow their own path with the WKNDRS. Since then, they’ve created large-scale murals in urban spaces and collaborated with brands like Spy Optic, Audible, Veuve Clicquot & more.

In this conversation, we talk about their childhoods; their individual art practices; visual communications when it comes to design; learning concept-to-execution in their corporate chapter and how they apply it to their combined art practice now; why Claire and Rachel love vintage & thrifting; what WKNDRS means to them out in the world; why it’s important to the soul to take leaps of faith and believe in yourself; how they evolve their art while staying true to who they are as artists; advice they’d give to emerging artists about life; and more.

TIMESTAMPS:

6:11 - growing up (Claire)

14:57 - growing up (Rachel)

28:51 - How they met in AU Arts

33:26 - Visual communications and what it is

36:05 - What they did and learned from fashion

40:06 - What the learned from a corporate structure

43:44 - Individual art practices

47:56 - The meaning behind WKNDRS

49:59 - Their vintage shop

51:09 - Their takes on thrifting

53:05 - Going for it and trying

01:00:55 - How do they keep creating in their style while staying true to their core values

01:05:13 - Advice to emerging artists about life

01:07:38 - What they have learned from each other

01:09:52 - What they want to say to their parents

01:11:43 - Final question

01:12:51 - Where to find them