Vitrice McMurry is originally from Jackson, Mississippi, and studied metalsmithing at Louisiana State University. She taught for many years at Metairie Park Country Day School. For the first ten years of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, she was the Crafts Director. In 2014 New Orleans Magazine named her one of the city’s Top Female Achievers. She was one of the founding members of RHINO Crafts Gallery, a non-profit craft cooperative.

She is married to musician John Rankin and has a daughter, Annie.

McMurry has shown at the New Orleans JazzFest for many years, as well as the Ann Arbor Art Fair, Festivale Acadienne, Sak’s Fifth Avenue, the New Orleans Museum of Art, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, American Craft Council shows, and the Buyers’ Market of American Crafts. Her jewelry is in the collections of Bonnie Raitt, Madeleine Albright and John Goodman, as well as local celebs Allen Toussaint, Peggy Scott Laborde, and Margaret Orr.

(Photo by Cheryl Gerber, New Orleans Home and Lifestyles Magazine)