Steven Siegel (b. 1953, White Plains, New York) is a renowned American environmental artist whose international career spans more than four decades. His work is distinguished by a profound engagement with nature, time, and the transformative processes of matter.

He began his career in New York’s Chelsea district, where he worked as a carpenter while creating abstract sculptures and drawings focused on the interaction between human-made structures and the landscape. By the mid-1980s, he had developed a deep interest in geological phenomena, inspired by John McPhee’s notion of “deep time,” and began incorporating natural processes such as sedimentation, stratification, and compression into his artistic practice—translating the temporality and evolution of the earth into sculptural language.

Siegel is widely known for his site-specific installations made from repurposed materials and integrated into their surroundings. His celebrated newspaper sculptures, such as New Geology #2 (1992) and Squeeze II (1998), take on monolithic forms that explore the passage of time through layers of paper and their eventual return to the landscape through biodegradation, thus completing a natural cycle of change, decay, and renewal.

Throughout his career, Siegel has maintained an aesthetic that merges traditional sculpture with scientific concepts and evolutionary processes derived from nature. His work examines the relationship between the natural and the artificial, the found and the constructed, growth and decomposition—inviting reflection on consumption, waste, and the contemporary landscape.

In the 2000s, he shifted his practice to the studio, developing abstract works inspired by the evolutionary processes of natural life. These pieces retain the essence of his earlier outdoor works: the use of post-consumer materials and gradual accumulative processes that give rise to dense, organic compositions—reflecting the continuity between art, nature, and the passage of time.

Steven Siegel’s work has been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, and public spaces across the United States, Europe, and Asia, solidifying his place as one of the most significant voices in contemporary environmental art.