Born in Greece in 1936, Athena Tacha was awarded an MFA in sculpture from the School of Fine Arts in Athens, an MA in art history from Oberlin College, and a PhD in aesthetics from the Sorbonne, Paris. Although well known as a pioneer in site-specific sculpture in the early 1970s -- she has won over forty public commissions from Alaska to Florida -- her art is much more varied and includes smaller sculptures, temporary installations, prints, drawings, video, film, photographic work, artist's books, web art, and many text-based conceptual pieces. Widely published and exhibited, and represented in some fifty museums, her body of more than two thousand works -- made of every conceivable material, from the artist's hair, breast and bowels, to sugar cubes, paper wasp nests, shattered automobile glass and cicada exoskeletons -- has never been catalogued before. In this richly illustrated volume, Syrago Tsiara, who co-curated the major traveling retrospective exhibition, Athena Tacha: From the Public to the Private, 2010, provides an insightful overview of Tacha's seventy-five years of exceptional creativity.