June Leaf was born in Chicago in 1929 and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the New Bauhaus / Institute of Design. Leaf's drawings, paintings and sculptures have been widely collected and are held in many museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. Steidl has published her Record 1974/75. Mabou Coal Mines (2010) and Thought is Infinite (2016).