Since 2006, Sonya Clark has been chair of the Craft and Material Studies Department at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond, Virginia. Formerly she was Baldwin-Bascom Professor of Creative Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

She holds an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art and in 2011 she was awarded their first Mid-career Distinguished Alumni Award. She also holds a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Chicago and a B.A. in Psychology from Amherst College. She is the recipient of several awards including an Art Prize Grand Jurors co-prize in 2014, Pollock-Krasner Grant, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Residency, an 1858 Prize for Contemporary Southern Art, a United States Artist Fellowship, and an Art Matters Grant.

Her work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Musees d'Angers in France among others. Her work has been exhibited in over 300 museums and galleries in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas.