Boor, a native of Utica, credits her building-contractor father with instilling in her and her six siblings a love of the arts. "He was very cultured," she recalls. "I would sit next to him and watch him draw with blue ink on white vellum paper. Those drawings would remind me of the clouds in a beautiful blue sky. And he would hum the most beautiful arias. My father impressed upon us that, through music and art, we were hanging onto our ancestry. For us, the arts were almost a form of ancestor worship."

Today, Boor still looks to her ancestors for inspiration in her work. "My grandmother used to make the gold epaulets for the Italian army officers' uniforms. For St. George's Episcopal Church in Schenectady, I recently designed an altar cloth and vestments that drew upon that theme of gold," she notes.

Although she is an accomplished sculptress - her works range from human figures almost abstract in their simplicity to finely detailed, lifelike busts - Boor considers herself a student: "It takes three lifetimes to be a sculptor. You never finish learning. I'm just on my first step."