Hillary Wagner holds an MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design and BA in Fine Arts from Mount Vernon Nazarene University.

Wagner has served as a visiting artist at The College of New Jersey, Northern Kentucky University and Mount Vernon Nazarene University.
She has served as adjunct faculty at Northern Kentucky University in courses on digital media and art appreciation.

Wagner was an invited speaker at the Queen’s Museum’s 2018 Open Engagement Conference and Project Anywhere’s 2018 Anywhere and Elsewhere Conference at The New School.
Also in 2018, she was interviewed by the Bad at Sports Podcast in Episode 639: Art and Ecology. 

In 2020, her work from the project SOIL SERIES: A Social Drawing and the art collective Bird Closet, was selected as the subject of several Guggenheim Practicum publications by Kanyinsola Anifowoshe and Mikki Janower including “Sustainable Futures: A Community Is a Garden.” and the tool kit “A Community Is a Garden: Tools for Artists, Communities, and Institutions.” 

Wagner's first solo show, Homemaking: An Overture was held in 2024 at the DSGN CLLCTV gallery in Cincinnati, OH.
Also in 2024, she was invited by Sister Cities International to participate in an artist residency at the Yingge Ceramics Museum, resulting in her work, Clay Quilt. 

She is a founding member of the art collective Bird Closet and oversaw their 2018 self-titled solo exhibition at Schnormeier Gallery in Mount Vernon, OH.
Her work was selected for Project Anywhere’s 2018 global peer-reviewed online exhibition and she has been featured in publications such as Project Anywhere's Anywhere and Elsewhere conference publication, Anywhere iii - "Three Conversations", Penmarks Annual Literary Journal and Plough Quarterly - "Return to Appalachia."