In 2007, Sandra Granzow completed an MFA at the School of Visual Arts, and wrote and illustrated a children's book, The Green World. Previously, at the Corcoran College of Art and Design, she earned a certificate in digital imaging. She also studied at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, the Washington Academy of Art and the Smithsonian. She has painted in California, New York and Washington, DC, Europe and the Caribbean, and has shown her work at the Visual Arts Gallery and E32 in Manhattan.

Speaking of the influences on her work, Ms. Granzow said, "My mother loved poetry and fleeting beauty - sunlight pouring in, rain threatening, breezes blowing, sand or snow drifting. In her old age, she summoned these moments to keep her company - 'a cloud of golden daffodils,' 'the sweep of easy wind and downy flake,' 'one luminary clock against the sky.' To her, the sensual world and the language that evokes it were almost inseparable. 'Beauty is truth and truth beauty' ' that's all she needed to know. This was my mother's gift to me.

"My father," she continued, "had a way of turning history, art and architecture into exciting adventures. The distance would melt away. I try to provoke the same sense in the viewer by giving a personal twist to the iconography of the past."

Ms. Granzow is also the author of Our Dream: A World Free of Poverty, a photo book published by the World Bank and Oxford University Press (2000). She holds an additional master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She serves on the boards of the Ghetto Film School, the National Coalition of Pastors' Spouses and the Gandhi Institute.