Christa Donner was born in 1975 in Morristown, NJ. Her father, an oboe player with a doctorate in physics and her mother, a professional flautist and talented accordionist, soon decided to relocate to the bustling metropolis that is Fort Wayne, IN, where Christa spent most of her formative years.

After a brief introduction to the world of modeling via Sassy magazine after high school, Christa started Sissy, a self-published zine based on that now-defunct publication, and developed various techniques to disseminate information on body image and the media to teenage girls. She then relocated to Memphis, TN to attend the Memphis College of Art  and to broaden her appreciation for Elvis impersonators. A year or so later, she transferred to the Cleveland Institute of Art, and went on to study at the New York Studio Program in Manhattan, where she worked as an assistant to sculptor Jeanne Silverthorne, studied with critics and artists, gained further perspective into the creepy world of modeling, developed some health problems, and began a new body of work based on her personal experiences. She returned to Cleveland to get her BFA in Drawing in 1998, and won the Wendy L. Moore Emerging Artist Award from the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in 1999. She earned an MFA degree in 2005 from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and has since been actively exhibiting, publishing, and teaching.

Christa Donner uses large-scale drawings and small-press artist's books to explore issues of women's health and body image. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums including Kravets-Wehby Gallery, Pratt Art Institute and Longwood Arts Project in New York City; POST Gallery in Los Angeles; the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, the William Busta Gallery, the Sculpture Center and SPACES in Cleveland; the Pound Gallery and Consolidated Works in Seattle, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; Wuthering Heights in Malmo, Sweden; and the Centro Columbo Americano in Medellin, Colombia.

Whenever she can, Christa accompanies her art with workshops focusing on body image, art and activism, and has led workshops and classes for Planned Parenthood, the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Institute of Art, Ladyfest East NY, the Bumbershoot festival, and all sorts of other fantastic organizations.

Now based in Chicago, Christa teaches printmaking and harbors a healthy obsession for independent comics and small-press zines, which she writes about for Friction, Dialogue, and Punk Planet magazines. She regularly presents workshops on self-publishing and tours the country with her zine projects, Ladyfriend and Free Advice. In 2003, she curated the exhibition Page Me: the art of zines, comix and other artist-made books for SPACES Gallery with Christopher Conti (Wexner Center for the Arts). She continues to make lots of  visual art and zines in her Chicago studio, and doesn't plan to stop anytime soon. For occasional e-mail updates on Christa’s latest projects, drop her a line at christadonner (at) gmail.com.