Artist. She joined with her husband Christo to create numerous very large temporary (mostly) urban works of art. Born Jeanne-Claude Denat de Guillebon in North Africa (she and her husband each used only their first names), she lived a somewhat vagabond childhood due to her mother’s several marriages. After education in France and Switzerland, she graduated from the University of Tunis in 1952. Jeanne-Claude met Bulgarian refugee Christo Javacheff in Paris in 1958. Christo was already creating art from wrapped packages and furniture; the pair’s first joint endeavor was made of oil drums and industrial paper for the Cologne docks in 1961. They then caused controversy in 1962 when they protested the Berlin Wall by blocking Paris’ Rue Visconti with oil drums. Wrapping was their trademark; after moving to New York in 1962, they commenced several major projects. Often financing their work through the sale of scale-models and drawings, they wrapped the Berlin Reichstag, the Kunsthalle in Bern, Switzerland, and a million square feet of the Sydney, Australia, coastline. Some of their better-known art included a 280 foot-tall round package in Kassel, Germany (1968), “The Umbrellas” (1991) simultaneously shown in Japan and Southern California, and the 2005 “The Gates” which graced New York’s Central Park. Originally, only Christo’s name appeared on the couple’s creations, but in 1992 the outdoor and major indoor art was redesignated “Christo and Jeanne-Claude”. At her death, Jeanne-Claude had two major works-in-progress, “Over the River”, large fabric panels spanning the Arkansas River in Colorado, and “The Mastaba”, 410,000 oil drums for the United Arab Emirates. She died of a brain anuerysm. Of the transient nature of her work, she said that her creations were meant to convey “the quality of love and tenderness that we human beings have for what does not last”. (bio by: Bob Hufford)