Her grandfather, Stephen Gardner, built the first grain mill in Dakota County on the Vermillion River.

[1] Her father, Samuel Mairs, died in 1891 and Abigail moved a 13-year-old Clara and her three younger siblings, Sam, Helen, and Agnes to St. Paul, Minnesota.

[2] In the 1910s she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and studied with impressionist landscape painter Daniel Garber.

Mairs returned to St. Paul by 1918 and supervised the Nimbus Club, an informal art group formed to allow artists to work from a live model.

She began experimenting with etching techniques and was influenced by Jean Lurçat's gros point panels.

[1] Beginning in Paris and influenced by her earlier work in textile design, Mairs created colorful five-by-six-foot wall hangings.