Meet Dana Marpoe who is the consumer category winner of our 30th anniversary design competition. 
Dana was unable to join us and be recognized at our cocktail gala April 18 because of a death in the family. Since she couldn’t attend the party, we invited her to come to our showroom last week for a private tour and of course, to see her winning piece.
Dana, who lives in Kernersville, NC with her husband and two cats, paints pet portraits. The fact that she is artistic is no surprise when you see the way she changed this occasional table dramatically. 
The original (3030-122) is a faded mahogany finished occasional table with marquetry on the sides, a black marble top, and brass gallery. The next photo shows Dana with her winning table having black lacquered legs, Irish white apron and black tooled leather top. She loves black and white and Hollywood glamour, which was the inspiration for her design. She was even wearing black and white when she came to visit. With her is Glenn Yelvington, our director of product development and design who finds her adaptation, amazing. Our contest judges also had kudos for her variation from the original.
I asked Dana to bring a few of her pet portraits for us to see. In the first picture above, she is showing a portrait of Ellie Belle, a pit-hound mix, and the larger portrait below is of Queenie, the Bishon Frise, which isn’t quite finished. 
Even her business card has a picture of the first portrait of her cat, Bandit, who happens to be black and white. 
You can see how talented she is.
Dana has lived in NC for over 20 years, but she is originally from Harrisburg, PA where she met her future husband at work. When he moved to North Carolina, she moved too and they married soon after. In that job she was in product development and has 4 patents – wow. She quit her job in 1999 because, as she says, “she didn’t want to work in the 21st century.” Changing career paths, she went to school later in life, and received a degree in Fine Arts from UNC-G. She began portraiture by first painting her pets and then the pets of her friends. Gradually her fame spread and now she always has a canvas on the go of one of her much-loved creatures.
Dana found our showroom overwhelming in its breadth of product selection, and said, “it’s a world apart from what I have seen at other places… beautiful."
At Maitland-Smith we always like to make new friends, and we made a new friend last week.
Visit our website, www.maitland-smith.com, to see the winning designs in our contest and click on "ONE Products" and create your own "ONE, Singularly Crafted for You" design. Maitland-Smith products are available through our authorized Maitland-Smith Dealers and Designers.
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