Christo is recognized as the great wrapper. Notice it is wrap; like I wrap a package and not rap; I rap like Snoop Dogg. Christo’s father, Vladimir Javacheff, was a scientist and his mother, Tsveta, was a secretary at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. He loved to visit the Academy and many saw the talent with in the young boy. He began his academic study of art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sofia, traveling on to Prague, Czechoslovakia, and then the Viennese Academy of Fine Arts before settling down in Paris, France. He frequented the museums and loved the work of Jackson Pollock, Jean Tinguely, and Jean Dubuffet. After escaping the communist rule, he was no longer a citizen and became a man without a country. Later, he would also drop his last name and only use one name. It was also in Paris where he picked up wrapping. It started with experiments with objects, canvas, rope and glue. He exhibited his first wrapped work in 1961, Stacked Oil Drums, when he stacked some large oil drums and wrapped them in a tarp and tied it together with rope.

Jeanne-Claude was also born on June 13,1935 in Morocco. They had met in 1958 while Christo was working on a commissioned painting of her mother. Jeanne-Claude was ingaged and Christo had is eye on her step-sister Joyce. Now here is where the story gets interesting: After the wedding Jeanne-Claude gets pregnant, by Christo. So after the honeymoon, her leaves her husband for Christo. Their son, Cyril, was born May 11, 1960. Despite her parents disapproval of the whole thing, they were married on November 28, 1962. Christo began working with Jeanne-Claude as his artistic equal in 1961 and they moved to New York in 1964. "When we met, I was not an artist. I became an artist only for love of Christo. If he had been a dentist, I would have become a dentist." She died as a result of complications due to a ruptured brain aneurysm at the age of seventy-four.

The focus of their work began to focus on environments in 1968. "For me, the real world involves everything: risk, danger, beauty, energy." The wrappings were left pure, no glue was used to stiffen the material. He alters the natural world with his art. They did several projects including wrappings of trees, interior spaces, monuments, coastal stretches, surrounding islands, and even the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. It is a little ironic when the building that houses art becomes a work of art beyond its architectural style. All of the work is temporary and they do get hassled, ironically, by environmentalists who think they are destroying nature. Although there are probably some really confused deer or birds that love around there projects, they are only up for a few days and Christo and Jeanne-Claude go to great lengths to leave the world as they found it and often make it better. The best example of this is the Surrounded Islands near Miami, Florida where they removed over forty tons of garbage from the eleven islands before they worked on the project.

Perhaps their best known work was the over two million square feet fabric fence, Running Fence. This works was not about wrapping anything at all, a lot of their work does not. The one thing that truly links all their art is their use of fabric, cloth, and textiles to create the artworks. Shortly after becoming United States citizens, Christo and Jeanne-Claude began to plan for Running Fence (it took about four years to get the project completed). This artwork ran through Sonoma and Marin Counties in California. The eighteen foot high nylon fabric stretched across steel cables to hang on the 2050 steel posts that spanned twenty-four and a half miles. It was even anchored to hover over the Pacific Ocean for a short distance. It took many convincing conversations with farmers and local officials, the work of nine lawyers, project bureaucracy, and a $60,000 fine for the lack of permission to hover over the water. This work was up for a week starting on September 10, 1976. Because the work is only up for a matter of days, art lovers must have some sense of urgency in seeing the projects up in their environment.