Mara Lonner received her BFA and MFA from the California Institute for the Arts. She works with a variety of mediums and genres to blur the conventional distinction between organic and geometric worlds. Recent work interweaves ruins, architectural ornaments and botanical forms, focusing the subjects on loss, extinction and the beautiful tenacity of nature. 

She taught at University of California, Irvine for 21 years and also taught at CalArts and Long Beach City College. She was twice awarded the Durfee Foundation ARC Grant and received a California Arts Council Grant. She was awarded a residency at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation for the fall of 2014 and is the 2014 Resident Artist at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, California.

Recent exhibitions include: Feminisms, curated by Andrea R. Hanley (Navajo) For 516 Arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico; The University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University, Las Cruces; LA Valley College Art Gallery, Valley Glen, CA; Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Cue Art Foundation, New York; LAXART, Culver City, CA; and large scale wall works for the Hagga Gallery in Descanso Gardens, La Cañada Flintridge, CA, and collaborations with Kim Schoenstadt, for the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art, Grand Rapids, Michigan and the Los Angeles International Airport.

Her first permanent public art project, commissioned by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission for a new community center in San Angelo Park’s community center La Puente, California, was completed in June, 2015. The second, in collaboration with Kim Schoenstadt and for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, is for a new Intergenerational Center in the San Fernando Valley.  This project was completed Fall 2018. Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority awarded her a large glass pavilion project, which will be a part of the new LAX/Crenshaw line (K Line), Completed in 2021.

She lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.