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The essence of created art is taking an internal vision and turning it into an external reality. By that definition, the work former ArtSpace/Lima executive director Ellen Nelson put into putting the art gallery on the map in the Lima community was truly a work of art.

Nelson, 79, died Feb. 1 in Madison, Wisconsin, where she moved in 2019 to be closer to family, according to her obituary. While her roots go back to the Badger State, Nelson left an impact on Lima through her involvement with the arts, specifically the Lima Art Association which became ArtSpace, first as a volunteer in 1984 and then as executive director in 1988, a position she held until 1998.

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“ArtSpace has been around for 60 years, so she got in midway through the history of the organization,” longtime ArtSpace board member Fred Odum said. “But it was more like an arts club before she was involved, and she really turned it into an institution.”

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That transformation involved moving the organization from its old home at the Allen County Memorial Hall to its present location on Town Square. For present executive director Sally Windle, Nelson was the leader ArtSpace needed in this effort as she possessed both the vision of what ArtSpace could be as well as the tenacity to make that vision a reality.

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“Looking at some of the old scrapbooks and pictures from the newspapers, there’s everyone from the business sector coming to see what ArtSpace was doing,” she said. “She had people from Westinghouse and from other businesses in there, and they were making decisions about what ArtSpace was going to do for the next show. So she had that way of making it not only the art community but also some of the leaders in other areas be a part of this.”

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