A native of Detroit, Clara Deike attended high school in Cleveland and earned an associate degree in education from the Cleveland Normal School in 1901. In early 1909, after teaching elementary school in Ohio and Kentucky, Deike began studying art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. That fall she enrolled at the Cleveland School of Art, studying with Frederick Gottwald and Henry Keller. After graduating in 1912, she taught art in public schools until her retirement in 1945. During the summers, she took various art classes, including those organized by Henry Keller in Berlin Heights, 1910-20, and Hugh Breckenridge in Gloucester, Massachusetts, 1921-23. On a leave of absence from teaching, Deike studied with Hans Hofmann in Capri and Munich, 1925-27. She exhibited in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1919-59) and showed her work throughout the Cleveland area in various exhibitions, including those sponsored by the Women's Art Club, a professional organization she cofounded in 1912. The Lakewood Public Library sponsored her first solo exhibition (1918). Her paintings appeared in subsequent solo exhibitions at the Little Gallery in Cleveland and the Washington Art Club in Washington, D.C. (1924), Cleveland's Korner & Wood Galleries (1927), the Gladden Studios in Columbus (1935), the Canton Women's Club (1937), and the Women's City Club of Cleveland (1950). She participated in group exhibitions at Kraushaar Art Galleries in New York (1927) and the Gloucester Arts Festival in Massachusetts (1953-1960). Transformations in Cleveland Art. (CMA, 1996), p. 226.
Biographical information exists in the Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.