Van Sant, creator of the GeoSphere Project, the first electronic, cloud-free, 3D mosaic of Earth composed of thousands of satellite images. Tom Van Sant is a sculptor, painter, and conceptual artist. In his professional work he has executed over sixty major sculpture and mural commissions for public spaces around the world. His professional skills and intellectual interests range to architectural design, city planning, art education and advanced technical invention. His large scale conceptual art projects of the 1980s led to the creation of The GeoSphere Project, an ambitious environmental display system designed to illustrate the issues of Earth resource management. The GeoSphere Image marks a milestone in cartographic history. It is the first satellite map of the Earth, showing the real world it appears from space. The work required one year of effort on the world's most powerful graphics computers by Van Sant, technical director Van Warren of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and assisted by Jim Knighton and Leo Blume. The image was first published as the title page of the National Geographic World Atlas. Al Gore cited Van Sant for his beautiful and useful 3d image of the Earth in the film An Inconvenient Truth.