Ellen Von Ohlen was only 12 years old when her mother died of breast cancer – far too young to lose a beloved parent, yet old enough to harbor cherished memories of how devoted Marie Von Ohlen was to her four children.
Ellen also knew early on how much her mom loved to paint. How she would often go out on Saturdays with friends from the Aurora Art League, creating landscape watercolors in the open air that captured everyday moments and places in local neighborhoods.
Still, the details of Marie Von Ohlen’s artistic life were not revealed until much later to her daughter, thanks in large part to the late Nancy Hopp and the book she wrote in 2011 about Ruth Van Sickle Ford, Aurora’s famed watercolor artist who had been a mentor to Marie.
Ellen Von Ohlen, 69 and living in Oswego, has other fond childhood memories: Of her parents sitting around their kitchen table on Grand Avenue in Aurora with a few other adults who were spearheading a campaign to establish the Aurora area’s first community college.
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Her father Dale, owner of Hanson Mattress Company in Aurora, not only led the steering committee that founded Waubonsee Community College in 1966, two years later he was serving as its first board president when wife Marie, only 42, succumbed to cancer.
Dale Von Ohlen remained as leader of the board until 1971 and served on it until 1983. A couple years earlier, when the college wanted to put his name on a campus building, he asked that it also honor his wife by making Von Ohlen Hall the fine arts center.
Using money he’d saved from travel expenses and other reimbursements as board president, he established the seed money for the Marie E. Von Ohlen Memorial Endowed Scholarship. It was after receiving a warm thank you in 2022 for this gift from new WCC President Brian Knetl that Ellen, who over the years had been collecting her mother’s artwork, hesitantly asked if the college would be receptive to the idea of hosting an exhibit.
Recognizing the talents of Marie, Knetl embraced the idea.
He was familiar with her work because when the fine arts building was being renovated, Ellen had donated a couple paintings to the school. One is displayed between Von Ohlen and Bodie halls, the latter named after Marie’s doctor and previous WCC board member Richard Bodie, who had proudly displayed one of her watercolors above the fireplace in his home until his death in 2020.
Two years after that request for an exhibit, WCC is, indeed, hosting “Marie Von Ohlen: An Artful Life” at the Sugar Grove campus to honor the woman who, according to a press release, “helped shape the college long before the first classroom doors ever opened.”
The exhibition, in the Arrowhead Room Gallery of Dickson Center, is open through Dec. 12, with a public reception from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Nov. 19. The event will feature a lecture by Ellen Von Ohlen from 5 to 6 p.m., where she will talk about her mother’s life, which includes not only her artistic talents but her pivotal role in the college’s foundational history.
This exhibit features 21 of Marie’s paintings, some of which will be for sale, with all proceeds going to the Marie E. Von Ohlen scholarship.
The college describes Marie not only as a “prolific” painter but as a “consummate supporter of the WCC mission” led by husband Dale, a Bronze Star recipient whose greatest regret, according to his daughter, was never going to college after returning from World War II.
As an artist, Marie designed the cover of the informational flyers used to share the proposal of the college and ultimately pass the referendum that would form the school.
Marie grew up on Ingleside Avenue in a home her father built from a Sears kit. According to Ellen Von Ohlen, her mother’s dream was to be an architect, but at that time women were discouraged from going into that field. So she enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago and began her career at The Fair Store in Chicago, designing window displays and advertising illustrations.
As was also expected of women at the time, she quit this job after marrying Dale, and threw herself into the activities of their children, including PTA, Scouts and Bible School. But Marie never abandoned her other passion, and would go out on Saturdays, often with a few friends in the Aurora Art League, into local streets and neighborhoods – mostly in Aurora and Geneva – “painting what was in front of them” and learning from watercolor pioneer Van Sickle Ford, who had also been her mother’s instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Marie captured farmhouses and storefronts, city blocks and homes, imagery of everyday landmarks located within Waubonsee’s district. And as her daughter became more familiar with Marie’s art, that mother-daughter bond – stymied by death too soon – began to grow stronger.
Among Ellen’s favorites is a bustling Shell gas station in Aurora that includes an inside peek through a latticed window and a man and small child at a gas pump – an image she believes represents her close relationship with her father, who passed away in 2019 at age 98.
Another piece close to this daughter’s heart is the final painting her mother did as she battled cancer, titled “Be Still and Know That I am God.”
“I could pick up on the anguish she was feeling, knowing she was leaving behind a husband she loved and four young children, as well as all the activity that was going on with the new college,” said Ellen.
Getting to know her mother more intimately as she collected, cleaned and prepared these watercolors with husband Lyle Rosine has been a blessing, she told me. But it has also been a reminder of a bright future and exciting plans cut so abruptly short.
Her parents often talked about moving to the city and becoming more involved in Chicago’s cultural scene, Ellen recalled.
“It makes me wonder what she would have done with her art had she lived longer.”