SALISBURY — Jan (Jano) Bell Fairservis, 96, a creative force in the Northwest Corner passed away July 11th at Sharon Hospital surrounded by her loving family.
Born in Greenwich Village, New Yorki, in 1927 to gem engraver Beth Benton Sutherland and artist/teacher Charles Mosely Sutherland, Jano grew up to live an extraordinary life.
In 1948 at Camp Sloane in Lakeville, Jano met her future husband, renowned archeologist, Walter A. Fairservis Jr. After graduating from Skidmore College, Jano married Walter and they spent their honeymoon on Mt. Riga in Salisbury, then headed out on a year-long archeological expedition seeking ancient civilizations in Afghanistan. Jano broke her ankle leaping from one level to the next in the catacombs of the Giant Buddha statues at Bamiyan. Ever intrepid, she laced her boot tighter and continued exploring. The couple later excavated predynastic archeological sites in Egypt and Pakistan where Jano drew artifacts discovered at the sites.
As a professional artist Jano lent her talent to famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, illustrating People and Places as well as several children’s books by other authors. She met Ms. Mead while working at the American Museum of Natural History in New York where Walter became the director of the Gardner D. Stout Hall of Asian Peoples, the museum’s largest cultural hall. She designed and painted artwork for many of the hall’s exhibits.
When the Fairservis family moved to Sharon in 1967, Jano peppered the Northwest Corner with her prodigious talents. She became indispensable at the Sharon Playhouse designing sets, creating costumes, building props, making posters, and directing and performing in numerous plays. Later, her daughter Teviot created East West Fusion Theatre Company, which mounted plays in a Kabuki theatre in the backyard. Before the shows, Jano cooked Asian food for 100 audience members and hosted a menagerie of actors during rehearsal periods.
For the 1976 Bicentennial, Jano collaborated with the Sharon Historical Society to write and produce a pageant celebrating the Revolutionary War. She costumed more than 95 Sharonites who participated in the joyous re-enactment of life in 1776 on the town green. Also for the Bicentennial, she wrote, directed, and performed in a musical review titled Sharon Plain and Fancy at the Sharon Playhouse.
Her gifts were tapped for many, many other local projects. When the Sharon Historical Society wanted a quilt depicting the town, she designed it; when an actress was needed for the part of Dr. Jo Everetts, one of the first women in the state to practice medicine, Jano performed it; when Noble Horizons held its annual Festival of Trees, she painted murals to decorate the entrance; and when the Congregational Church of Salisbury agreed to a performance of Amahl and the Night Visitors, she, at 90 years old, created the sets, made the costumes, and directed the production.
In 2001, after her husband’s passing in 1994, Jano moved to her ideal home in Salisbury with her daughter Jenny. The Covid lockdown gave Jano time to concentrate on her own painting. Inspired by dreams, she created a series of 36 paintings of angels, each with its own backstory. With the help of her youngest daughter Beth, she collected her celestial portraits in a book titled, Angels of Our Better Nature. At the Sharon Historical Society’s gallery in 2022, she had a highly successful showing of the angel paintings as well as other works depicting landscapes and animal portraits.
A vibrant creative force until a few days before her death, Jano constructed an eight-foot-long “Rainbow Dragon of Peace” puppet for Beth that was featured in the Green River Festival Parade in Greenfield, Mass., and a week before her passing, she taught her regularly held elder “Limbering Up” exercise class at the Lakeville Town Grove.
Jano is survived by her four daughters Teviot Fairservis, Elf Ahearn, Jenny Fairservis, and Beth Fairservis Katz as well as her grandson, Olin Fairservis Katz. She will be greatly missed by her family and many friends. Please feel free to join the family in a celebration of her life at 1 p.m. on November 2nd, 2024 at the Congregational Church of Salisbury. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made via PayPal to Teviot’s cat sanctuary in Malaysia at www.catbeachpenang.com/donate/ or www.paypal.me/catbeachsanctuary
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino 
