Artist Doesn't Need Modern-Day Electronic 'Gadgets;' She Has Nature

The great outdoors and wildlife attracted Alla Jablokow from the time she was born in was called Leningrad, Russia.

Jablokow, 81, a La Grange Park resident and watercolor artist, took in everything that she saw from the trees growing in the forests to various animals. Living in the United States for more than 50 years, she found new places with different scenes. Whatever the landscape was, it became a subject of her paintings.

She is now sharing 40 years of work in a special retrospective exhibit, which runs through June 25 at the La Grange Art League Gallery & Studio, 122 Calendar Ave. The gallery will host an opening reception from 2 to 5:30 p.m. Sunday, June 5.

This is a kind of last hurrah as Jablokow as she slows down her schedule because of health reasons.

“In those 40 years, I painted 2,200 paintings,” said Jablokow, who also teaches a league-sponsored watercolor class. “About 100 are left and the rest have been sold.”

As a youngster and the only child in her family, she found an interest in drawing. Her fondness for natural landscapes came from her mother who lived on a farm as a child.

“Because my mother grew up on a farm, she had a great respect and love for nature,” she said. “She taught me to observe when we went for long walks on what was going on around us. When I was young, I liked to analyze whatever I saw. Later, my outlook changed. There is less tendency to analyze but more need to sort out and unify what I saw.”

Her parents also passed on their interests in drawing scenes from their environments.

“It’s in your genes,” she said. “My father drew wonderful illustrations of me doing things including taking a bath or playing a game. He was good in drawing figures. Then my mother picked up some colored pencils and did a wonderful picture of a calf in the meadow trying to drink from a creek. I was so impressed.”

Jablokow created her own sketch book filled with stick figures and houses. Her life turned dramatically when the family moved to western Germany to escape Soviet occupation during World War II. While Jablokow attended school, her mother was stationed at a local hospital while her father worked for Volkswagen. He was killed in an air raid in 1944.

When the war ended in 1945, she explained that charitable and religious organizations helped displaced immigrants build new lives in England, Venezuela and the United States. Jablokow’s mother stayed in Germany while she went to New York in 1951 thanks to World University Service, a charitable group. Her mother came to the United States later.

From New York, it was off to Philadelphia. Through the charitable organization, Jablokow took dictation at the University of Pennsylvania’s law school and took basic college courses. She also met Victor, a Russian-born doctor. Because Pennsylvania didn’t recognize his degrees, he moved to Illinois with Alla in 1953. They returned to Philadelphia in 1954 to marry in front of family.

While Victor did an internship and residency at Evanston Hospital, Alla earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology and worked in the zoology department at the University of Chicago.

“I tried to find the answers to many ‘whys’ that I had asked as a child,” she said. “The course in ecology specifically tested my powers of observation as well as my artistic abilities because I illustrated every minute detail.”

As the couple expanded their family in the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was a devoted mom. With the little free time she had, she did some sketching. The family moved in La Grange in 1961. In the late 1960s, she rediscovered her love of  by attending adult art classes at Lyons Township High School.

“All of the sudden, it was ‘Wow,’” she said. “I’ve been trying to paint with oils and acrylics and doing pottery. You first try to find something where you fit in. When I discovered watercolors, it just clicked.”

Bob Krajecki, her teacher at the time, showed her different things to draw. From his teaching, she blossomed with her work and joined the La Grange Art League in 1973. She loved her new medium.

“I liked the flow of watercolors,” she said. “It looks so easy but it isn’t. It’s very difficult in the beginning for people who start watercolors. You have to let the watercolor do it’s own thing instead of mastering it.”

As she discovered, the natural landscapes she would see on her trips became her subjects. Her educational background and love for the environment influenced her artwork.

“All I can say is that I never expected to get so much out of life,” she said. “I never accepted electronics and computers and all that stuff which, I think, makes me very odd living in this century. But, I don’t need these things. I don’t know why people have to have these little gadgets. Every time I go outside, I see so many wonderful things out there.”

She thanks her children and her husband, who died seven years ago, for all their support.

“I’m very pleased as to how my life went,” she said. “The main factor was my husband. He was very loving and never ever got upset that I didn’t have dinner on the table. We always figured out something together.”

Jablokow has also touched the lives of longtime friends such as La Grange Park resident Mary Lou Omeis. An art league member, she paints in oils and watercolors.

Describing her friend as “an excellent artist and a very sweet person,” Omeis said Jablokow was responsible in finding space for the league’s gallery in 1981.

“She found this place but it was a horrible mess,” Omeis said. “She was just adamant that we had to have this place. A lot of people disagreed with her. We got it and we worked hard and made it what it is.”

Speaking about Jablokow’s exhibit, she said it was wonderful.

“I’m a little older than she is and, believe me, it’s very hard to put together an exhibit,” she said. “When you’re younger and you’re painting constantly, it’s a little easier. It takes a lot of time and energy to be a painter. I think this is great that she’s doing the exhibit.”