November 30, 1936 – December 8, 2025
Mary Lee Adler was born in Lakewood, New Jersey, and died in Acworth, Georgia, having lived a life shaped by curiosity and a deep attentiveness to the world’s textures—visual, material, and human.
Mary Lee was an artist: a printmaker, sculptor, and teacher whose commitment to craft never diminished. Even into her early eighties, she continued working in steel, specializing in sculptural urns.
A magna cum laude graduate of Vanderbilt University, Mary Lee continued her studies at Chelsea College of Art in London, where her formal training met the wider world she would spend her life exploring.
She was preceded in death by her mother, Esse Rau Adler; her father, Arthur A. Adler; her daughter, Nancy R. Hiller; and her husband, Herbert L. Hiller.
Mary Lee is survived by her daughter, Magda Marakovits, and her granddaughter, Wyatt Wilson, in whom her legacy of intelligence, creativity, and attentiveness continues.
Mary Lee Adler lived deliberately, observing closely, working carefully, and leaving behind objects, meals, students, and memories shaped by intention. Her life was an act of making, and the evidence of that making remains.
