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A Miracle Worker

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By ELIZABETH LEE BROWN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 22, 2007

LUTZ - For two decades, Don Smith has spent his days making molds and fitting amputees with his prosthetic creations.

He has labored in a laboratory plying with plaster, polymers and foam to cast and shape the artificial limbs.

At night, he would paint murals and help create elaborate stage designs for church performances.

The two seemingly incongruent careers have recently flip-flopped.

About 18 months ago, Smith launched Miracle Murals, a painting business where artists offer God-honoring artwork to local churches, schools, homes and businesses.

Creating murals has moved to the forefront, while prosthetics has been pushed to the backburner. Smith still spends two days a week as a certified prosthetist at Hanger Prosthetics & Orthotics in South Tampa.

How did these two worlds collide and then swap?

The 47-year-old father of three believes it was divine intervention.

Art and drawing were early passions. He holds an arts degree from the University of Louisville. His focus was in drawing and printmaking.

After graduation, however, he struggled to sell any of his pieces. That's when a newspaper ad caught his eye.

The classified ad called out, 'Work with foam and plastic - start the New Year right,' Smith said.

That propelled him into a prosthetics career that wasn't too far from working in an art studio. In the lab, he used band saws, mixed plaster and made polymer forms in large ovens. He used sculpting tools to create one-of-a-kind pieces.

'It was a neat way to use my hand and eye coordination and to help people,' he said.

Smith said his life took a turn after a heavenly sign.

In 2005, he awoke at 3 a.m. drenched in a cold sweat. In the dream, he lost his prosthetics job. Then God came to him and told him not to worry, that he would start Miracle Murals.

Smith said he wrote it all down.

'The business plan was laid out - that you're going to glorify my name painting murals,' he said.

'I wasn't sure what that meant. Am I just going to paint for churches and paint pictures of Jesus on the wall, and how is that going to happen? Not everyone wants a picture of Jesus on their church,' Smith said.

At the time, his prosthetics career was blossoming. He was a manager at Hanger, where he has been working for 11 years.

'I had no intentions of doing this business at this stage of my life. I always thought my purpose was to do prosthetics and then paint,' Smith said.

One night, while painting set props for a church cantata show, Smith told a colleague about his dream.

The friend, Angel Schmidt, said she wanted to be his first employee when he launched the mural painting company. She now works for him as an artist.

About the same time, his home church, Van Dyke United Methodist, accepted his proposal to paint a 4,000-square-foot mural in the children's classroom wing, one of his first commissioned works.

Several of Smith's murals can be seen around Lutz: in a teahouse, a new meat market and wine store, and in the children's Sunday school wing at Van Dyke Methodist.

One of Smith's recent works gives the illusion of a mountainside growing out of a wall.

The Butcher Block, a gourmet food store at 16319 N. Florida Ave. near Chapman Road, features the wine cave where Smith carved and painted Styrofoam to create large boulders around the doorway.

The three-dimensional mural juts out 2 1/2 feet from the wall and was sealed with a flame-retardant coating to meet county fire codes.

The sculpture was inspired by a Napa Valley winery where a mason built a stone wall on the side of a hill.

One of Smith's earlier works is an English countryside village mural at Mrs. Tea's Garden at 124 Flagship Drive off U.S. 41.

The hillside scene shows one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon churches in England, a cemetery, a row house, a windmill and a whimsical teapot-shaped hot-air balloon, all framed by a white baluster.

When Smith starts a mural, he usually sketches it on paper and then on the wall. He uses photos and other pictures as a reference. On larger, more complicated works, he lays out a storyboard.

Smith's current mural project is transforming his two boys' bedroom into a soccer stadium.

The mural will show his two soccer-playing kids flanked by professional soccer players in a soccer arena during an afternoon game. Smith also plans to paint a cloudless sky, stadium seating and grass on the concrete floor.

'When you'll be sitting around the bed, I want it to look like you're in the soccer stadium. You'll basically be in the center of the field,' he said.

His two sons, Elliott, 12, and Marcus, 8, play for the Hillsborough United soccer league and are fans.

To make the work realistic, Smith photographed his sons standing against the bedroom wall in the same afternoon sun.

He also snapped pictures of the afternoon sky outside his Heritage Harbor home, where he also lives with his wife, Cheryl, and 17-year-old daughter, Hallie.

He will use the pictures as reference to make sure the shadows and lighting are just right.

In times of doubt, he recalls what he said when his boss asked him about his dream job.

'I said, 'I know this is going to sound corny, but I just want to paint for Jesus,'' he said.

Reporter Elizabeth Lee Brown can be reached at (813) 865-1502 or ebrown@tampatrib.com.

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