Mai Miyake was born in the Naka-Ward of Yokohama, Japan and spent her childhood in Australia. In 2002, she left her position to pursue illustrating full-time, becoming the focus of many one-woman gallery exhibitions. People are attracted to her work which reflects the essential uniqueness of the Japanese people and at the same time adopts past humor and esprit to modern times.
In November 2003, she received the judge's special prize for her work in the mounting section of "The Second Amuse Artist Audition in Kyoto".
She is highly evaluated for her fashionable work. Making use of her original classic sense, she produced modernly arranged kimono and yukata (a light cotton kimono) which were rated as the most popular by the viewers of the yukata production section in the BS Japan "Happy Design" exhibit. She does not stay in the confines of traditional fields but instead expresses her worldview with a Japanese pop-girly taste in her exhibit "Miyake Mai Room" on LAFORET HARAJUKU LAPNET.
She recently collaborated with United Arrows Green Label and introduced a line of children's clothing in July, 2004. She is also being featured in a modern art book published by COOL JAPAN BNN in 2004. She had great success with her project "Ocha no Jikan (Tea time)" at Shibuya Bunkamura Gallery in August 2004.

Whenever I begin the process of creating work for a new exhibition, I always start by looking at the space, the landscape, the season, and the people of the place where I'll be displaying my work. This is the first time I'll be exhibiting in a land I've neither seen nor visited before. So, from the various creative sources I have within me, I have chosen one that most
closely intersects with the exhibition's theme of "Express." We, the Japanese people, live in a small land of high temperature and high humidity and we've always used screens and sliding doors made of paper of varying thickness to control space, light, the effects of the seasons, and even our mental state. It may be just a piece of paper, but it makes all the difference in the world. That's kind of how I feel about my work. Japan's beloved comic book character Doraemon has a magical tool called the "Docodemo Door (Anywhere Door)," which takes you to anyplace you want just by opening the door. Such a concept of temporal and spatial transportation has had a long tradition in the Japanese imagination and DNA. [Mai Miyake]