One of the greatest process artists is the San Francisco son of a shipyard pipe fitter, Richard Serra. With his hands on approach, he became internationally known as a artist who’s works seem to defy gravity. He began his formal training at the University of California at Berkeley, however his degree was in English literature. He worked his way through school at the steel mills. “I think working in steel mills gave me a whole notion of how to use steel in a way that it hadn't been used before.” This real world work experience would serve him well in his professional art career, as well as inspire that career. A few years later he received a masters degree on art from Yale University. He then studied in Paris, France and Florence, Italy. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts, in Oakland, California.

Serra liked experimenting with his artistic approach. He did everything from throwing molten lead on wall to make impact casts to using enormous plates of curved steel to look as though it is weightless. He also integrates other industrial materials like rubber, wood, and concrete. “I started as a painter and I started using rubber and lead and a lot of other things and when I finally picked up a piece of the steel, I realized that the way steel had been used in the Industrial Revolution, the way it had been used for making bridges or silos or whatever, hadn't been used in sculpture.”