In 1999, Marianne van den Broek picked up a tool and started making figures in a block of sand. Little did she know that the course of her professional life was about to dramatically shift. “I was working on part of a project near Amsterdam in my native Holland where I was initially hired to do grunt work, shoveling and compacting sand into blocks,” van den Broek said. “When they let me stay and play along with the professional sculptors, I became hooked pretty quickly.”