Emily Trespas

Artist & Teacher

Emily Trespas built her life doing what she loved, what gave it purpose and made her happiest: teaching, coaching, counseling, and mentoring students at Phillips Academy; hours spent in the painting and ceramics studios creating art; and love and appreciation of nature and the outdoors, where she ran, skied, hiked, biked, and kayaked. She was devoted to her family and longtime partner, Peter Andrew Copelas of Salem, whom she married in October 2020. She was 49 when she died of cancer on February 11, 2021.

A life-long Andover resident, she joined the academy's art department in 1999, where she taught introductory and advanced-level courses in painting and drawing, printmaking, and visual studies. Her purpose in teaching, she said, was to strive to instill in her students curiosity and confidence in their creative promise. Along the way, she dispensed humor and joy in living. A resident and house counselor in Morton House for 18 years, she also coached Outdoor Pursuits, leading students on hikes and overnight camping trips in New England woods.

In 2014 the academy awarded her the Edward S. Harkness Instructorship and more recently she held the Independence Foundation Teaching Endowment chair.  For her commitment to Phillips Academy, she will be remembered as faculty emerita.

Emily graduated from Mount Holyoke College in 1993, magna cum laude, and was inducted into the Phi Betta Kappa Society. After Cornell University, where she received a MFA degree, she was awarded an internship at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, in Venice, Italy, and then worked for Cornell's College of Architecture, Art and Planning in Rome, developing a lifelong love for Italy and everything Italian.

As an Andover Village Improvement Society (AVIS) trustee and warden, she directed TARC Spring Thaw 6 Hour trail races, ultra run/walk events that raised funds for local land organizations and where the finisher's award was always her original artwork. Known as the Trail Pixie, she also volunteered countless hours at GAC race events, always giving back to the trail-running community which she loved so dearly.

A painter, printmaker, potter and book artist, her works have been displayed and sold locally at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence, the Andover Center for History & Culture and other galleries in the U.S. and abroad.  Always generous with her art, her work also graces the homes of many colleagues and friends.

Besides her husband, she leaves her mother, Paula, of Yarmouth Port; a brother, Timothy, of Brooklyn, N.Y.; and three stepchildren,  Jason, Sarah and Tori Copelas. She was predeceased by her father, Peter Paul Trespas. She will be interred at Chapel Cemetery on the Phillips Academy campus. The family plans a celebration-of-life gathering after pandemic restrictions are lifted.