She began her life in Elkhart, Kansas as Mary Margaret and although she felt artistic as a young girl, her artistic nature was not validated.

“It was the Mid-West.”

Many years later, her wide array of friends convinced her that she was the consummate artist.

Mary Margaret married, had three children, twin daughters, Courtney and Paige and a son, Chandler. Her husband was on Oil Executive and they lived abroad for twelve years. Home was Libya, Rome and London. She studied Art abroad, but said,

“I had a complex because I couldn’t draw.”

She broadened her stroke and style before returning to the United States and made San Francisco home.

As a divorced mother of three, Mary Margaret transformed into Murai and she began her own business, designing clothes and interiors. Her designs were art, to wear. At that time, she used her son’s middle name, Murray and her last name, Smith.

“I wanted my name to be ambiguous.”

She made intricate jackets and coats that were both painted and collaged.

“They were fancy and I. Magnin was my first client.”

Murray became Murai when she sold a piece to a gallery and the gallery owner made out the check as, Murai Smith. Murai is a Japanese sur name.

“My son said, Mom, why don’t you drop the Smith and just be Murai?”

She legally changed her name and from 1979-1990, Murai the designer had a sales Rep in New York and London, with private shows in Boston, New York and Los Angeles.

In 1990, her children were grown and it was time for another transformation. Murai moved from Pacific Heights to the Inner Sunset, went back to college and supported herself by driving a cab, which she continues to do six nights a week.

“I like to drive. I’ve been driving since I was twelve years old. I get to travel and go to school, two things that I love.”

She has made discoveries on the road.

“When I was in Design, I often judged people by how they looked.”

And in a cab?

“There’s a person sitting behind me. I’m not looking at them. You get what’s in their heart, what’s in their character. It’s so much more about the person. They’re not selling you anything. I’ve lived all over the world. I’d never been a worker. It’s very humanizing.”

Murai received a Bachelor’s Degree from New College and a Masters in Psychology from Sonoma State. At the time, she thought she would become a therapist but the creation of art had its magnetic pull.

There have been many artists that have inspired Murai, but her three favorites: Kurt Schwitters, Wassily Kandinsky and Robert Rauschenberg.

Kurt Schwitters was a German artist most famous for his collages, MERZ PICTURES, which has been called psychological collage. He used fragments of newsprint, found objects, bus tickets, old wire and pop media images that alluded to current and autobiographical events in Germany in the 1920’s-1940’s.

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian abstract painter. He was fascinated with color, spirituality and psychology. He related painting to music and said,

“Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the piano with strings.”

Robert Rauschenberg was an American Sculptor and Painter. In the 1950’s he saw a Schwitters exhibit and was mesmerized. He said,

“I felt like he made it all just for me.”

Rauschenberg sought to highlight the gap between art and life. He picked up trash on the streets of New York City and he integrated clothing, debris and taxidermied animals into his art.

I can see the influence of all three of these artists in Murai’s work as she moves me around her apartment as she shows me her art. In fact, her apartment looks like a studio, even the kitchen and bedroom are converted into a gallery. There are elements of Schwitters’s collages, Kandinsky’s vibrancy of color and Rauschenberg’s themes of the integration of art and life are expressed in Murai’s Quantum Critters. The Critters are drawings of beings that impart a powerful and positive message. Of her Quantum Critters she explains,

“Quantum critters are packets of energy that show up at random when you least expect them and most need them. They have healing properties and are metaphors for change.”

Murai is also a packet of energy. When she’s not driving a cab, taking a combination of Fine Arts, Computer Graphics, Illustration and Poetry at City College, she produces daily art which might be a photograph, a painting, a drawing or a sewn object. She began this venture as a one year project on January 1, 2008, and when 2009 presented itself, she decided to continue creating and sharing her unique and necessary daily art.

If you’d like to visit her on-line gallery:

http://muraiart.com/

NEXT WEEK: MEET CRAIG, THE MAN BEHIND THE LIST.