“When I look back and connect the dots, it's very exciting. [My journey] is taking me somewhere that I feel the most fulfilled. And I was supposed to go through those hard times to get to where I am now,” shared multi-media artist, Mary Lai, last month, reflecting on the many chapters of her broad design career. We met in the lobby of the W Hotel in West Beverly Hills where she is the artist-in-residence with a full takeover of the lobby.
Lai, a Korean American artist, has consistently followed her passion, uncovering gems in the process: “If I feel something, I just have to it. I’ve continued to take these risks where I don’t know where I’m going to land, but somehow I’ve landed”. Even the artist takeover around us was the outcome of chance meeting at the Other Art Fair years ago that later connected her to the opportunity to showcase her wide portfolio of art - from sculpture to her mixed media canvases with poured resin and rope to a digital art installation featuring Web3 artists.
Lai started her career in New York City as a graphic designer for a fashion brand starting with hang tags and slowly shifting into product design for children’s handbags (think: kids backpacks with PawPatrol or Frozen) and then to luxury handbag design and production. Fast forward to 2012 when Lai decided to launch her own handbag line, working with an atelier of skilled Korean ahjussis in NYC’s Garment District to make her own line. “They [the ahjussis] are the best handbag makers. I would go there every day, buy them beers, and they would teach me”. Her eponymous handbag line boasted a small, but mighty following and Lai won multiple awards for her work. The line later shuttered given the intense competition and amount of capital required.
Lai then rolled the dice, shifting careers to work for a previous boss who was out in LA, building and designing homes. In her next chapter, Lai learned the ins and outs of residential interiors and art curation. She started to produce custom artwork for the homes they were selling and began attending art fairs to showcase work. Quite unexpectedly, this began to peel back the curtain on the art world, which she was interested in exploring further.
In 2019, while still working with the luxury development company, Lai started to play around with an alphabet series that would lay the foundation for her next venture. “My daughter was coming home from preschool and we would be putting up these letters on the wall that she created at school and I would be looking at it everyday. At night as I was working on some designs, I decided to create my own version combining artists that inspire me with the letters she was learning and teach both things in one”. The series started selling out almost immediately and Lai decided to shift to being an artist full time.
Since then, Mary has been unstoppable - constantly learning and evolving while honing her craft and practice. "For me, if I'm always doing the same, I think I would be either getting bored or not challenged," Mary declares, encapsulating her dynamic approach to art-making. Her most memorable work to date is the sculpture, a first for Lai, that is outside of the W Hotel. Called “The Dream Portal” it is a reminder to seize the moment (symbolized by the arch of a rainbow) and create your own opportunity. The work captures the ethos of Lai’s journey - at each juncture she took the lessons learned and leaned into her own passion to determine what was next: "When they say you fail your way to success, it's really just about that — you can have those big moments of 'I didn't make it, or this is not working.' But you have to figure out how you're pivoting, changing, and getting yourself out of that...".
This relentless pursuit of innovation has led Lai to explore NFTs, starting The Hungry Artist project, to being selected as a grantee of the Lakers In The Paint program highlighting emerging artists in LA to showing her own piece at Context Art in Miami next month. As her star continues to rise, Lai is also embracing her identity as part of her story - “I never told people I was a Korean American artist before because I just didn't want people to use that against me for whatever reason…Now I often lead with, ‘I'm a multifaceted Korean American artist based in Los Angeles, California’… people want to know more about who the artist is and what their background is”. She went on to share that in her prior career as a handbag designer, she often thought she may have been more successful if she hadn’t used her own name. “It’s nice that I no longer feel like I have to hide certain things. The fact of just being and representing is enough”.
Mary Lai stands as a testament to the power of authenticity and resilience in the art world. Her story is not merely one of personal triumph but an emblem of a broader narrative — the journey of diverse artists forging paths where none existed. Through her art and her story, she not only explores her own artistic expression but also paves the way for future generations to draw inspiration from her bold strokes of life.
You can purchase Mary’s art on her website here and follow her on Instagram. Photos courtesy the artist.