Haverford SD Awards New Art Scholarship

HAVERTOWN, PA – The School District of Haverford Township recently awarded a senior at Haverford High School the first ever Janice Loper Fanelli Memorial Art Scholarship. The new scholarship honors longtime Haverford art teacher Janice Loper Fanelli by presenting a student with scholarship funds to pursue art education.

Sinead Roche, Haverford High School Class of 2017, was awarded the first annual Janice Loper Fanelli Memorial Art Scholarship Wednesday, May 24, at a student awards assembly in the Haverford High School auditorium, according to the district.

A certificate and $1,500 check was presented to Roche by Janice Fanelli’s son, Richard, a 1973 graduate of Haverford High School, and School Board member Russell Bilotta, who is a Fanelli family cousin, the district said.

Roche plans to attend the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in the fall, according to the district

The scholarship was recently established in memory of Janice Fanelli, an accomplished painter who taught art at Haverford High School from 1966 to 1983, the district said. She passed away in March this year at the age of 91.

Janice Loper Fanelli was a 1943 graduate of Germantown High School and a 1947 graduate of The Museum School, which later became Philadelphia College of Art in 1964 and subsequently The University of the Arts in 1985.

She did post-graduate work at The Pennsylvania of Fine Arts and went on to teach art at Ocean City High School in New Jersey before marrying Victor Fanelli, a commercial artist, in 1949.

She resumed teaching in the mid-1960s while raising three sons, the district said.

For 30 years following her retirement in 1983, Janice Fanelli devoted herself to painting landscapes, still life arrangements and portraits in acrylics, pastels, watercolors and mixed media.

She was an award-winning fine artist and a member of the Wayne Art Center, the Art League, the Artist's Guild of Delaware County, Woodmere Museum and the Philadelphia Watercolor Society. She continued to paint and exhibit until five years ago.

In June 2014, she had a retrospective exhibit of her work at Lima Estates in Media, where she moved following her husband's death in November 2013.

For more information on the Janice Loper Fanelli Memorial Art Scholarship, please contact Richard Fanelli at rfanelli@fmstudios.com.

Pictured from left above are Richard Fanelli Sinead Roche, and School Board member Russell Bilotta

Images via School District of Haverford Township