To best know Jill Wells, is to sit at the intersection and listen. For she is many things—an artist, an advocate, a mentor, a speaker, a mother, a sister, a daughter—and works across mediums as she explores the beautiful coalescence of the meaningful and crucial pieces that make up the human experience, ideas like identity and belonging, race and history, communication and accessibility. Her work is both an invitation and a statement, aimed at fostering community, dialogue, and awareness about human interaction that connects people beyond her own lived experiences. And like the butterfly often found in her work, it is about transformation, transcending and reflecting perceptions as she envisions a more equitable, inclusive, and accessible future.
“I began to ask myself: What if accessibility wasn’t an afterthought, but the starting point? Each work became a question made visible, audible, and touchable—a landscape where description, presence, selfhood, and future safety coexisted from the beginning,” Wells said. “By integrating audio, video, and tactile elements at the inception of each piece, I create environments that speak across sensory boundaries—works that are felt, heard, and seen without hierarchy. Each multisensory piece is an offering, built with the understanding that access is not optional but essential, not just for art but for identity, belonging, and the promise of a safe, inclusive future.”
JILL WELLS ART
Jill Wells of Jill Wells Art is an Iowa-based artist, advocate, and mentor whose work explores the intersection of accessibility, disability inequality, race, and history. She has become known for her use of tactile, Braille-infused public art and has developed a portfolio of work across paint, performance, sound, light, and large-scale murals that sparks dialogue through the subtle and often invisible liminal spaces between visual expression and sensory engagement.
Wells, who has a BFA from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, served as a Substance Use Activities Specialist and a Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor for the state of Iowa for roughly a decade before deciding to pursue her art full-time. It was, and continues to be, an experience that has deeply informed her work and empathetic, expansive approach to connecting with the lived experiences of people from different backgrounds and ages. In 2020, Wells founded the ARTIST X ADVOCACY Mentorship Program, which connects youth with emerging and established artists in the community of all abilities. Wells has also spoken on The Power of Public Art as a TEDx speaker and became the first Artist Fellow at The Harkin Institute of Public Policy & Citizen Engagement at Drake University in 2022.
Her work has been presented at the United Nations, The Zero Project in Vienna, and the International Conference Center in Belfast. It has also been exhibited at the Dubuque Museum of Art, the Des Moines Art Center, and Al-Quds Bard College in East Jerusalem-Palestine; and held in both public and private collections, such as The Chicago Lighthouse, the Center for Afrofuturist Studies at Public Space One in Iowa City, the Evelyn K. Davis Center for Working Families, and Disability Rights Iowa.
But for Wells, who was recently recognized as one of nine artist recipients of The Tanne Foundation 2024 awards, the work is deeply personal with an artistic vision rooted in the transformative potential of art and how it can serve as a catalyst for social change and for creating a movement that advocates the right for all individuals to express themselves freely and authentically. It is, in some ways, a spiritual practice, and a closely held language of love meant to amplify voices, to serve as an act of resistance, and to evoke empathy across divides.
“Art has been in my life since a very young age. My grandmother, who is an artist and turned 90 years old this year, is the person in my life who introduced me to studio arts and a place and a space, and creativity in a way that was based out of ancestral work, community-engaged work. She was, and remains to be, an avid risk-taker within her practice,” Wells said. “It just seemed part of my bloodline, and so growing up raised in a smaller, rural community about 30 minutes south of Des Moines in Indianola, my grandmother would take me around at the age of seven or eight to this studio with other elders in the community to practice art.”
INTERSECTIONS
Immersed in the arts from a young age, Wells said it allowed her the place and the space to understand what she was good at as she was growing up and a chance to develop her love language, which she considers acts of service and gift giving, informed by her time surrounded by a community of artists making together. Encouraged to pursue the arts by her family, Wells attended Drake University where she was embraced within a community of other creatives who really challenged her, and by one of her professors, to think critically about the work she put out in the world.
“She said, ‘Jill, you need to be very responsible for these things. You really need to think about them,’ and oftentimes if there were stories I was seeking to tell, images that I was looking to use, languages, she would ask me to do the opposite. It was the first time I really felt like I had someone in my life who started to steer me toward experiencing another person’s perspective in art, instead of, ‘This is what I want to create, and this is how I want to create it,’” Wells said. “I was asked to seek out how it would be used or perceived by other people and what I was missing. I’m really grateful; it changed the course of my work drastically.”
During her thesis work at Drake University, Wells began exploring the intersection of historical narratives and perspectives and African American studies, since she had at that point little knowledge of her background. Her father, who was African American, had passed when she was two years old, and her mother is of European heritage.
“I had this lived experience of who I was, which was developed through that early experience in a studio, like, ‘I find myself to be an artist, that is a piece of me, but then there are all these other pieces of me.’ I was very curious about that when I was at Drake and studying, and so I looked for history around the African American side of my family but had a lot of trouble finding it in the library, and online, much of what I found at the time was limited to commercialized content—images and information available primarily through ‘click and buy’ platforms,” Wells said.
“This Black genealogical research was directly connected to a series of old photographs around formerly enslaved individuals in cotton fields, so you could purchase these images and I was really taken aback by how nobody really knew who these people are and who was benefitting from the purchase of these images and this is how I was getting the most direct access to some of those histories and those narratives. And so, I wanted to explore that and how I was perceiving information about myself and then thinking how other people were perceiving me, like when we encounter and meet, how do you perceive me? What are these histories that come along with it? What is the experience of other people outside of me?” Wells added.
ART IN LISTENING
Early in her practice, Wells explored this idea through a series that juxtaposed those existing images with figures of individuals from future generations, like an academic graduate posed in the middle of a cotton field. For Wells, it explored “the truth of the image” and recognized ancestors who paved the way and endured for future generations, for herself, to then have the privilege to pursue education and artistic practice. It also reflected a curiosity of how to address other people’s lived experiences through her own work, which has since evolved in her practice where it is based on the intersection of identities of race and disability across personal, familial, and community experiences.
“Currently, I’m 44 years old and honestly it took me until my 40s to identify my sensory needs and my sensory challenges. It was around the time of the pandemic that it came on board for me personally, a point at which I was a substance abuse counselor for the state of Iowa, during which I truly learned how to listen. It was drastically different than any type of listening I had done as an artist,” Wells said.
“Often, you are listening to materials, and it can be siloed, it’s not always based around community, and so to be in the counselor seat, you are always second in that relationship and listening and being an active listener is absolutely vital. I think of it as an artistry. There is an art to listening and being in conversation with folks,” Wells added.
Wells said she wouldn’t have changed her time as a counselor for the world, having the privilege to sit in conversation with people who shared some of their “most sensitive, vulnerable joys and celebrations, but also extreme hardships,” for it continues to directly impact her practice today. It was also a deeply poignant time in which she watched others struggle to be apart from “that human element of proximity” during the social isolation of the pandemic.
“It was just too much. It led me to looking at my mortality in a way that I had not before, and I was trying to find this answer of how do I do something about this? It was like a rustling out of the nest, it was this spiritual thing that kept nagging at me, like if you don’t try to use your art to mitigate these things or address these things, if you don’t try it now, you might not ever try it,” Wells said. “So, I quit my job in the middle of the pandemic.”
Commissioned early on to do a mural, which was just enough to keep the lights on and take care of her son, Wells said it allowed her to marry advocacy and artistry. It was also around this time that she began to experience ocular migraines as a result of lighting and began to explore how light influences mood and conversation and cadence of speech. In “Let Hope Grow” for Youth Justice Initiative in West Des Moines, Iowa, Wells paired lighting and biophilic design with her mural work to transform a former jail holding cell into a counseling space for the program.
“It’s a huge, cinderblock room that originally had this bank of bulletproof glass on one side and the heavy doors with the heavy locks. I knew I needed to have imagery that had a specific narrative, used color theory, and then the tactile part came on board—which is based off some lived experiences with my brother who had a brain aneurysm in high school and lost his eyesight,” Wells said.
“It was all these things I knew I needed to put together from lived experiences, from counseling experiences, from these identity experiences, so now it’s a space with a biophilic designed interior garden—looking at the science behind that type of design especially in a state where we have six months of grays—that allows for someone to experience art in a way that is truly multisensory and they have control over the light. They have this imagery that talks about growth and a season that alludes to sound,” Wells added.
SEWN FROM RESISTANCE
Wells demonstrates a deeply thoughtful approach to her work, in which she invites people to collaborate, brings viewers in as participants of the art, and is cognizant of the shifting layers of identities, abilities, and experiences. There is an element of deep healing that emerges in her practice and while art is often about provocative thought or sparking dialogue, Wells feels a deep responsibility to how people—of all abilities—engage with her work and collaborative projects. It may not be quite what audiences want or expect from her, but like her recent “Sewn From Resistance” installation at the internationally recognized exhibition space, ARC Gallery in Chicago in March 2025, it is about the examination itself and the challenge of stereotypes, celebrating the intersectionality.
“The sociology of how we relate to each other and the psychology is like, ‘I need to make sense of something right away,’ and so we compartmentalize parts of identities. I almost feel like I need to say to people that there are such things as Black disabled people, like it’s a thing, it’s real,” Wells said.
“Because oftentimes people are like, ‘Why would you create work around disability,’ not understanding that what they are doing is having this assumption around this part of my identity that seems to not make sense because of their lived experiences or the histories that are played out for us throughout time in classrooms and on televisions and on magazine covers. So, I was like, I really need to have this conversation using very diverse materials and pull in narratives from other Black disabled individuals throughout history,” Wells added.
“Sewn From Resistance” deconstructs narratives and examines the intersection of Black and Disability histories within the distinctly American context. Through paint, sound, and tactile sculpture, the site-specific, multisensory installation combines personal and learned experiences from Black disability activists—like Audre Lorde and Brad Lomax, among others whose own stories played crucial roles in the Civil Rights and Disability Rights Movements—to “amplify voices and stories often erased from mainstream discourse.” Objects like the 1958 Kenmore convertible sewing machine—an ancestral object that speaks to Wells’ maternal grandmother as well as the duality of labor and leisure—and a set of black-and-white justice scales are featured alongside shadowboxed Braille works, blacked-out shelves with blacked-out banned books, and hundreds of 3D-printed butterflies—all of which are in the constant deconstruction and reconstruction process of making an American flag.
“When you think about the Disability Movement and the 504 sit-in, [a historic disability rights protest], and the Black Panthers, they were absolutely pivotal to that movement being sustainable which led to the ADA coming to life. Within history, we often don’t see a lot of those figures, and so I think to this sewing machine and the flag that is being sewn by that machine as multiple iterations of this American flag that is then transformed into these black butterflies that make the flag again,” Wells said.
“The butterflies in a way stand in for the Black body and it is in a predominately white gallery space, so they move across these white spaces and become the forefront as a presence, they thread the black thread, they move in and out, they migrate, and so to be able to have those conversations freely right now to me feels more important than ever because this is in the truth of who we are, and what we can do, what I can do, in any given moment feels like I’m able to honor those people who did come before me. I feel a real responsibility to be able to do that,” Wells added.
FOE PROJECT AND BEYOND
For Wells, much of her work carries a connective thread and a deep significance, and in many ways, serves as a soft bridge in that intersection, inviting artists and audiences alike to consider themes of radical accessibility, legacy, and community.
It is also not just about art for her, it is about creating a movement and in 2022, she launched a project near and dear to her heart known as The Freedom of Expression Project, or FOE. Initially a 10-artist group endeavor that has since expanded to 12 artists, FOE is dedicated to “exploring the intersection of human experiences and the fundamental right to freedom of expression for individuals of all abilities.” The project showcases the work of Iowa-based artists who live with disabilities, amplifying their voices and fostering collaboration. The annual public art exhibition has also expanded for the 2024-25 program with an adaptive fashion runway inspired by FOE artist Kevin Thor and a traveling exhibition at the Des Moines Art Center. Other participating artists include: Holly Newvine, Jack Marren, Sarah Sadie Logemann, Vera Webster, Nathan Williamson, Zoe Niswander, Leo Bird, Ryan Mueller, Ariel Patchin, Lucas Martin, Meri Van Ahn, and Deb Arguello.
“It was a real beautiful treat and experience to be able to get all the artists together [in 2022], learn about their disciplines, learn about what they needed—particularly within a universally designed, accessible exhibition that considered consistent artwork height, inclusive language, Braille and audio didactics, and prioritizing time and accessibility in the physical space. Then, looking at whether we needed a sensory space within the exhibition for debrief. It’s an annual project where we are able to continue to work together and invite other artists and it’s been fully supported by the Greater Des Moines Public Arts Foundation,” Wells said.
In “Painted Black Love Letters,” a deeply personal, deeply communal installation Wells has been quietly working on since April 2024, the work becomes more than a static image. “Painted Black Love Letters” is a 65-by-75-inch walnut shadowbox featuring LED, acrylic, oil, and handmade paper with gold thread and ink, gold wax, and love letters inside hand-made books in English, Spanish, and Braille. The installation was commissioned by Drake University, born from “the bold beauty of the #PaintItBlack movement, nurtured by the vision of student leaders who demand more than performative change,” according to Wells.
“There are moments when art becomes more than image—when it carries the weight of voices, the echo of protest, the fire of memory,” Wells said. “It is a piece that doesn’t just speak—it listens. That doesn’t just hang—it holds. This piece is about legacy and love work. It’s not just a tribute to those who came before—it’s a promise to those still coming up that they deserve love and that their stories are sacred.”
And in addition to The 3D Tactile Mural Model Initiative in partnership with Street Art Belgrade—which provides tactile, visual, and audible access to public murals for audiences of all abilities, particularly those with vision impairments—Wells also has the images of her public mural work scanned and 3D printed, offering tactile versions with embedded audio and video QR codes in an effort to “broaden how we define access to public murals.”
“As an artist, I carry an unwavering responsibility to confront inequities—creating something urgent and enduring where art, access, and advocacy converge to reshape how we gather, witness, and remember through memory, resistance, and radical inclusion,” Wells added.
First published in Great Lakes By Design: In Harmony, Volume 9, Issue 2
Text: R.J. Weick