JANICKI, HAZEL (19 Feb. 1918-1 Jan. 1976), artist, was born in London to American parents, Joseph and Madeline Faulkner Janicki. She was raised in Paris until the family moved to Cleveland in 1929. Janicki enrolled in Cleveland School of Art in 1937, then worked for CLEVELAND PUBLIC LIBRARY making posters and displays. In the 1944 Artists for Victory exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Janicki's mural for the USO Lounge in Cleveland's Old Federal Bldg. received honorable mention. Janicki was an accomplished portraitist, but was best-known for her tempera paintings of realistic figures in dreamlike settings. She exhibited nationally and locally, especially in MAY SHOWS. She received a Tiffany Foundation grant (1949), a University of Illinois prize (1948), the Clarke Prize from the Natl. Academy of Design (1951), and a grant from the Natl. Institute of Arts & Letters (1955).
Janicki combined abstraction with detailed studies of rocks, shells, nests, drawers, and draperies into the 1960s, with actual draperies and other objects beginning to emerge from her paintings, and tromp de l'oeil renderings covering wooden constructions (Children's Room Door, 1969, Akron Public Library). In the 1970s she returned to painting ("Triptych: Heaped, Stretched, Hanging," 1972, Kent State University). Janicki taught design, drawing, and painting at Kent State University from 1952, was active with Ten Thirty Gallery, and was president of the WOMEN'S ART CLUB. Janicki married twice: to John Teyral in 1942, and to William Schock in 1951. Schock, Janicki, and her stepfather were killed in an automobile accident, New Year's Day, 1976 in Florida. She had no children.
Valencic, Joseph. Hazel Janicki/William Schock: A Retrospective Exhibition (1977).