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Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Wells was a schoolteacher at the time and entirely self-taught in her art.
She did so perfectly, igniting a deep spiritual calling that found her abandoning the conventions of the craft.
Wells pieced unusual shapes and fabrics together.
She attached buttons, yarn, zippers, snippets of text, and even police tape.
My work is not traditional, she has said.
If they tell me to make my stitches small and tight, Ill leave them loose.
She added, This is truly me: the unfinished, the unpolished.
I couldnt do it.
This quilt was used regularly as a tablecloth during Thanksgiving celebrations at her Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church in Tuscaloosa.
I understand the gallerys temptation to focus on abstraction.
First, exercising different conceptual muscles is essential to Wellss wide-ranging practice.
The woman is situated among flowers, and a red parrot is looking down from a branch.
This is a beautiful, sacred space.
That is not to say that her abstract quilts dont tell a story.
Wells works with ephemeral, disposable, and found materials, often assembling scraps of cloth in eccentric ways.
Or if something is lying around the house my husbands clothes or childrens clothes I would use it.
Parts dont quite fit, then boom click into place.
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