Deanna Asborno

DOVER- Deanna Asborno, 79, a former resident, artist, and contributor to Dover historical events, died in early December 2019.
Born in Stockton, CA, December 19, 1939, she moved to New York state with her husband Mike Purcell (Sr.), who was in the radio broadcasting business, and son Michael in the early 1960s. Located in the mid/upper Hudson River Valley, their residences moved farther south to Poughkeepsie, and ultimately New York City. There she worked for Compton advertising doing commercial art and also attended the Arts Student League in Manhattan.
While Mike Purcell was working in radio in Manhattan, the family was introduced to the Mount Snow valley and she enjoyed many a NASTAR race when she came to visit, both before and after her son Michael moved to the valley in 1981. She relocated for a time to California where she attended San Joaquin Delta College and the University of the Pacific.
A classic artist, she studied from life, drawing, color, composition, portraiture, outdoor landscape painting, sculpture, computer graphics, and Photoshop. Her work was shown in many national juried exhibitions, earning her more than 75 top awards in California, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont.
While living in Vermont, she was a substitute teacher, freelance artist, and gave private art lessons. There are many local students who had sketches done by Mrs. A.  While in Dover, she designed the Dover Bi-centennial coin, created a signature piece of Dover artwork featuring Sonny Brown and his horses, painted the “big chair” in the West Dover pavilion, the bear outside the church in Wilmington, among other things.
 She was preceded in death by her mother Edith,  brother Louis, and sister Liz. Deanna’s only child, Michael Purcell, lives with his wife Tami and their daughter, Deanna’s granddaughter, Giovana, in Marlboro, VT.