00:01
Hello everybody, thank you for joining me on the Healthy Project podcast. I am your host, Corey Dion Lewis. I have another great guest with me today, artist.

00:12
advocate and so much more. Uh, Ms. Jill Wells here with me, Jill. Thank you so much. I appreciate you being here. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Yes. I'm excited too. Cause I've been wanting to have you on the podcast for a minute. I'm like, is she going to be on my. Yeah. She out here doing it. She's all smoking mirrors. So before we get into the episode or, you know, getting into our conversation, tell the people a little bit about yourself and we'll get you up in the

00:42
Well, my alarm clock for sure gets me up in the morning. Like five of them, like about three minutes apart. At least five of those. I'm not the only one, okay. I'm a graduate of Drake University and so to back up a little bit further, I grew up in Indianola, Iowa. And

01:02
Then my first higher education was DMACC for two years, and then I transferred to Drake University. And then that's where I graduated with a BFA in fine arts. And my major at Drake was painting, so classically trained studio artist. And then my minor was art history. And I've traveled a little bit. So I went to Ireland a couple years ago and exhibited some work. I spoke on panel last year at the United Nations,

01:32
incredible. That really honestly hasn't even quite sunk in all the way yet. And I run a mentorship program that I started in 2020. And it's artist ex advocacy. So it's primarily focused on the career side. And I work with youth and young adults and looking at art as a real viable career path.

02:02
I was a substance use counselor for eight years for the state of Iowa before I went into a full-time practice as an artist Oh, very cool. I loved I thought I would have retired doing that I really did, you know, and I didn't see myself at all doing that when I was in college at Drake I did not take any

02:23
like real career path set of courses or classes. I took some, you know, psychology, sociology, but it was not on my radar, this is what I wanna do. It was really after I graduated that through a series of events that I experienced personally, that some of my family members experienced and some of my friends, that I started to consider going into counseling.

02:53
After eight years, really the kind of rustling out of the nest was honestly COVID. Up until that point, everything was in person. And so the pivot to telehealth services was, right? Yeah. Really challenging.

03:13
However, I think we were kind of behind in the times of doing that. A lot of the coastal states do telehealth services. So in a way I'm glad for accessibility reasons that telehealth services did come online for folks who are in rural areas or for accessibility reasons, can't physically get to see someone. And so once we kind of made that pivot and got adjusted, what I wasn't anticipating was at that time I was working for PACE.

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with youth who were a lot of them juvenile court ordered to treatment. And I had never in like the three years I'd been there heard any of them say that they wanted to go to school until the pandemic.

03:56
Really? They were like, I want to go to school. Yo, they were just so out of touch with people and community. They were like, I need to be, I need to see people. Yeah. And be around people. Absolutely. And it was like, cause you're still in telehealth services, so you're listening to these things, you know, not in person. And then you're watching things happen on a screen. And it was kind of like a horror movie in a way. It was really hard to sit there and just watch.

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is drastically different when you're not in person. And I just was also confronted, I think like a lot of us with mortality, right? Yeah. And my mortality, I started looking at it differently and assessing regret. And so.

04:47
I thought I will really regret not pursuing what I went to school for like I've pursued my counseling career. I literally went back to school to get all the accreditation and training to get my board certification by the state of Iowa.

05:05
And so I thought, well, if I can do that, something that, you know, then you need to give this a good shot and see if you can combine these two things that you love, which is advocacy work and art. And that's really where my mentorship program came from. Wow. So, so can you tell me a little bit more about, you know, how you combine your, your artistry and your art with your advocacy? How does, was that, how, how does that come together? It comes together through a lot of social engagement. So one-on-one.

05:35
small group, large group, public works, being...

05:40
connected to the community. That is how, that's one of the ways I do the, I guess the marriage of art and advocacy work. Materials is a big thing for me. So being a classically trained artist, I was always working on canvas, but there were other artists around me in school who were using unconventional materials and I loved it. I just, for some reason, didn't have the confidence to think that I could articulate my voice off of a canvas.

06:10
And so now I find myself being able to really do that. And I almost feel somewhat constrained sometimes when I go back to just straight easel work. Really? Yeah. It's almost like a little jail for you, for your creativity. I'm telling you, it's wild. I never would have thought of that. You know, it's like, oh, okay.

06:31
And it is a big, big way that I combine the advocacy side. Because if you're using a material like a canvas and you're doing paint on canvas, then there's actually an experience that someone has because of that material. But let's say you introduce, like I did a piece with a sewing machine. What's your experience with a sewing machine with paint on it versus when the paint is on the canvas, right? So you have this whole different.

07:01
set of conversations that come about because of the material that you're using. So it's almost, you're almost getting a twofer. You're getting the experience of the senses of how it feels to paint on something different, but also the end result. Yeah. Hmm. Absolutely. And that end result then leads to further inspiration about, well, what material comes next.

07:27
How do I further the dialogue? Because I'm in conversation with the community about shared experiences around fiber, around the mechanics of something like a sewing machine. And then it just evolves, the work continues to evolve from that. And so the advocacy side can come from materials, it can come from social engagement.

07:50
I think though, what I love about my time in the counseling seat is I've learned how much advocacy work actually comes from listening. And so I don't know how I'd like to do that, but I find myself wanting to in the future figure out a way to create work that is about listening or silence or something like that. Yo.

08:16
your silence of you're not hearing yourself, you're hearing something else, you're experiencing something else in a sensory way that moves beyond sound even sometimes. Right. Can you talk a little bit more about your process? Like when you, is there something that triggers in the community or that you want to advocate for? Is there something that triggers that? And what is that process to create art around that?

08:44
Gosh, there's so many things in the community that I hear when I do listen. And I feel like over the past, I would say, maybe two or three years, I've been really.

09:04
I think moved by intersectional social issues, to be honest. And I think back to when I was growing up.

09:12
And you know, I've told this story before. I like to tell this because I think that it's something that still happens to this day. So I think it's still very relevant. I experienced a lot of like microaggressions and one of them that'll never leave me. And in a way, I'm happy that I experienced it is like, why do you sound white? Oh, talk about it. Yeah. Yo. And when I was younger, I think this happened when I was like maybe 13.

09:38
Even at that time, though I didn't have the language to understand that's what it was, this is a microaggression that I'm experiencing, I was confused and my first response was, well, what is, what does white sound like? So I was identifying somehow these intersectional things, but not knowing, you know, what that was. I just was so confused. And my automatic response was, well, what is that? And

10:07
I felt like I kind of knew what that person was alluding to was the opposite side of, you know, my identity. Right. So I have these two things that I'm experiencing from being biracial. And then as I grew and experienced more things within my own internal world and then external world with people around me, especially when my brother had a brain aneurysm.

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Ew.

10:37
became a part of his identity that was different than when he was before his, his trauma. Right? So he's a black man and he's living with a disability and now these are intersectional social issues of race and disability. And then you think about how does the healthcare system impact someone who has those identities? Right? And so I, I know I experienced these

11:07
past two or three years, it's just been at the top of my mind on, you know, bringing those identities to life and asking other folks, you know, like through my work, do you experience things like this? So hopefully it's like a respectful way of prompting that that conversation or that discourse around this. And if so, then as we speak and listen to one another, what comes out of that? What do we do about that? If that's you know, which I feel like is still going on. Yeah.

11:37
something that I feel like a lot of people of color have had. I literally was talking about this on two podcasts ago with a Latina woman who was, same thing, where she felt like she, someone was telling she was speaking like a white girl.

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And she was like, well, I'm not, it was like, I'm not, like how am I supposed, how else am I supposed to talk? And then there's that, then there's that conversation you have with a lot of people of color where now we're going like code switching. Well, am I, am I talking? Like, is it? Yeah. There's, there's so much, so many layers to peel back on that, you know what I mean? And I think, I want to say through your art.

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or through art in a way, you can express some of those feelings better than how you can speak them. I would agree with that 100%. And I feel like that's been such a gift to me.

12:39
You know, again, early on, I got involved with the arts because I had someone in my life, my grandmother, who's still with us, my maternal grandmother, who's an artist, started taking me to art classes with her, you know, in a little basement studio. And I'll never forget it and be forever grateful that that gave me a safe space to have the language to deal with all these things. I had no idea that I was actually processing. So it did give me a healthy therapeutic outlet. And it's always been there for me.

13:09
is my first language to be honest with you is art. In whatever material, whatever discipline, and I do find myself being able to say things that I feel much safer through the material than if I you know speak it you know right away. And I think longer when I do it. Right? So if I'm in studio and I'm...

13:32
dealing with the material and working to transform it and create, then I'm constantly in thought about, um, I remember Basquiat had this quote that says, I think about life more and art less and regards to what transpired when he was creating. And that's always resonated with me too. I was like, that was like, I was like, oh my gosh, I do that too. Um, so yeah, I, I think that art does provide that for a lot of people and kind of going back to

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I noticed that online, like, I don't want to, I guess, drop certain names for like companies or whatever, but like across the board, distributors who sell art products were just getting sold out. Yeah, man. Right?

14:18
Yeah. And I don't think it was necessarily, and even managing boredom is a healthy thing, right? This is a coping skill. I think it was deeper than that. I think there was that for me anyway, I perceive that as.

14:34
we are telling ourselves and one another that there's real true value in the humanities of art and what it does for us as a people to be able to heal and manage things. Yes. Yeah. I think cause we were, I was buying stuff from some of these craft stores as well for my kids. And I think I told you, I got really into adult coloring books and there's something about

15:05
And I'm not, if you told me to draw something right now, it's, you're gonna be like, bless his heart. I love it, I'm gonna be like, look, let's talk about it. But that's where I was gonna go. That's a stick figure, and what it means to me. But no, what I'm trying to say is like, even.

15:29
Even through a non-artist like myself, I feel like there's a way just, I've noticed even when I was stressed, just the pressure I would put on the coloring, on the pencil.

15:43
You know what I mean? Or how focused I was on it or how focused I wasn't on it. You know what I mean? And I think there's a lot more to art than just creating something pretty or something people think about. And at least my next question is, and you kind of touched on it a little bit, but I kind of want to go further, is that correlation between art and mental health.

16:13
and how it can help someone. What are your thoughts on, you know, art being more a part of the kind of the healthcare experience? What does that look like to you? Well, some examples of when I was a counselor, so disclaimer, I'm not an art therapist. It's a real thing. Oh yeah. Right. I pulled from my experience as, you know, an academically trained artist, right? Like,

16:43
and then just said, Hey, can we do this? So I think I was probably four years in to my work in residential treatment working with adults. And the owner of the one of the co owners, co founders of that company. She was just such a champion of all of us honestly. And when so when I asked like, Hey, can we basically just do art? It wasn't part of the

17:12
process. There was a lot of writing that was part of the process of recovery and I guess if you want to call it like the curriculum or the treatment planning side of it. But there was nothing that was.

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truly art other than if it was just I'm doodling in the kitchen or something like that. So I was really happy that that was brought on board. And so what I found from that experience is one, it became a really strong nonverbal tool and things would naturally flow out. So you could introduce certain exercises and maybe ask someone with a prompt to do something like a

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was what my hands hold and the left was the past and then the right was the future or some folks would do present and kind of combine those two and as things would get kind of quiet and you know folks make selection around color and doodling takes place then a lot of barriers I think consciously fall away

18:25
allowed to speak and kind of move through and you're just the vessel and like you were saying you will be able to have conversations around the pressure of let's say someone does a heart versus if they do a star is the pressure heavier on the heart is it lighter on the star and it can just be

18:52
you know, maybe there's nothing to it. Maybe there's something to it. Maybe there is something to it, but it's not known now and it comes about later, you know, like three years when you pull the thing back out again. And maybe that's only for you. So I think it's, from my experience, it's something I have found has allowed for previous clients that I worked with for a lot of their barriers to be removed or unblocked. And I've seen how they would progress forward.

19:22
would see how they would build that into their treatment plan for when they were discharged like this is what I'm gonna do as a coping skill to go home and then on like a PT side for physical therapy, I mean it can be really really great for dexterity and Focus with different levels of sight impairment. I mean me personally I just truly believe in it. I've seen it and I have worked with organizations here in Des Moines that are focused

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health. Like I did a piece for Broadlawns and I mean, everyone involved in that from the engineers to the folks that did the lighting. I mean, they, there was no one I worked with that did not believe in the power of bringing on art into that space for healing and for mental health. Yeah. Cause I'll be curious to see what happened to the future. And I'm sure there are places that are just full of art, but there's something about

20:21
When you look back in the back in the day, when you go to the hospital, it was just white walls. It felt that hospital feeling, right? Where you just wanted to turn around and not be in there to.

20:35
being more of a welcoming place, like with art. And I still haven't been to that clinic yet where that art's at. I need to go there and see this. One of the things I loved about the design of the building is the architecture has, what is that, the east facing side of the building is all glass windows for the ceiling. So it allows nature to come into the building. Oh, that's so dope. And so you can see those pieces there accessible from the outside of it. Oh, that's cool.

21:05
So thinking of accessibility, can we talk a little bit about this Freedom of Expression project? Yeah, absolutely. Talk about that. So the Freedom of Expression project is a 10 artist group project and I partnered with Mosaic in Iowa, Central Iowa, and then gosh, a plethora of others. Primarily though, eight of those artists were from Mosaic. And then two of those artists are...

21:34
in our community. They work with other organizations but not primarily with Mosaic. And I would say it was the winter of 2022 that we all got together at Mainframe, sat down, the 10 of us for the first time, met, talked about art, talked about life experiences, talked about

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experiences that they had had in their pursuit of arts. And across the board, what I found is that, um, specifically those artists that I was working with in the freedom of expression project had not been offered an opportunity to have a gallery exhibition of their work. Um, they'd also never worked as a group of artists to do a group show. And those are things that I started doing very, very early on in my career. So I was like, well, we let's, let's do this.

22:28
Yes.

22:29
And everyone said yes, so I was really grateful that everyone said yes to the project. And so within my mentorship program, I typically work with one to two individuals each year. And so between 2022 and 2023, I was able to work again with 10 instead. And so each artist has a different discipline.

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community and some just at whatever, you know, they're like maybe later on, you know? And I think that that's so appropriate in expressing those boundaries. So over that time period, we partnered with other artists at mainframe. We did some community engagement opportunities with IPR. So for those artists who are interested in public speaking and sharing about their work, you know, they have that connection. And then we're working weekly. You know, everyone's creating.

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a body of work, the work is progressing, the work is progressing, and then through funding through the Greater Des Moines Public Arts Foundation, all the artists were able to have their supplies paid for, they were able to be paid for their work, and so that body of work came to life at Polk County Heritage Gallery and the first Monday in May of 2023, and it's really the Freedom of Expression Project is it for all of us is an evergreen project. So our hope was

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and that bringing that body of work, that group exhibition to life or the community, we'd be able to advance the conversation about equity in arts, accessible arts, and looking at art as essential to the freedom of expression and the quality of life for being a human being. And it was recorded by the gallery, by Polk County Heritage Gallery,

24:29
attended exhibition openings in the gallery's history. Okay. So right, like what that says is that oftentimes marginalized communities and folks in the disability community, it's like, this is not a benevolent thing, right? Like these are real artists. Yeah. And this is not charity. What they're saying, their voices are very, very important. And the work that they're bringing is powerful, important work. And they were able to galvanize

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that going is our next question. How do we tour that body of work? And so over at Slowdown Cafe, we have two of the artists work right now, Vera Webster and Ryan Mueller's pieces. So folks can see those there. And then to back up again a little bit, very shortly, I think maybe a month or two after mainframe picked up a part of that exhibition as well. So we started noticing that it was kind of going out into the community and

25:29
to do its work and so we're not gonna stop there. We're gonna see what happens next. I think it's great and there was a video that I'll make sure I link in the description of this episode but the young man you were working with. Jack. Yeah, Jack who spoke so, so well about what he, his artwork looked dope. Man was dope. Jack Marin is incredible. Yo, but the way he was able to.

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talk about how he can express himself through his art is important. And also remind as I'm, as I'm thinking, I remember as I'm watching it, it reminded me of, um, I mean another friend from another episode of my podcast, we're talking about how, um, how things that were meant for

26:18
For example, like the divots in the sidewalk that were meant for wheelchairs, right? To be able to just get through. But people who don't need wheelchairs still can access that and still use it and see it benefit from that. And I think with the project and what you do with these individuals that you serve and mentor, I think it shows the community that, yo, yes.

26:44
They have whatever but they're still a part of the community and everybody can benefit from seeing their art And ours art doesn't is what it is. It doesn't matter who created it. It doesn't matter who created it Let me tell you it doesn't matter who created it. But what I mean is it doesn't Why should it be treated as charity? Because it was created once by someone who identifies with a disability

27:10
Well, and then the other question is, I think what it brings to light is, one, and then I'll kind of back up a little bit, is there's a lot of people that are living with disabilities that you would never know. Right? Yeah. So just because something's quote visible, you know, right? Like these things, these, and that to me goes back to those intersectional social issues.

27:39
There's some people that are just never gonna talk about what they're going through and we need to be kind and Remembering we're all human beings and that does I'm guilty of it I'm not gonna act like I'm not you know, I get moving fast You know I get impatient sometimes and I'm like I got to slow down And remember that the person next to me is probably going through something and they're just not talking about that part, right? And so That is a piece of it when we think about artists

28:08
or how folks identify, right? Whether they're bringing an exhibition of work to a space or they're showing up at McDonald's every day. Like, you just don't know. Whatever we're doing, we are who we are. And, you know, siloing people or kind of compartmentalizing us as one category or another, you know, it just, it takes, it takes a little bit of slowing down again and...

28:38
And we don't always know what we don't know, right? So then there's that side of it too. But yeah, I think just to go back to what you were saying around, you know, Jack and his work and specifically how he articulates what art does for him, he does, he speaks very well about...

29:02
his work and his voice, how art helps him. And, you know, it's...

29:11
I don't know, I think there's a lot to that, but, and I don't wanna speak on his behalf, so I can always connect folks to him in regards to having further conversations around his work. Right. When we last spoke, when we first spoke, you talked a lot about how you're intentional when you post art and how you explain it, right? Which...

29:35
That is easier said than done. But why is that important? Because there are people, if we have to be mindful of everybody, why is that important for us to really be mindful not only of artwork, but of how everybody that's around us wanting to be included and be more inclusive? So.

29:57
Image descriptions for if that's kind of what you're talking about. So image descriptions for me is something I didn't know about. And that's the part where I'm singing like we don't know what we don't know. I hadn't really seen that online and I didn't have any experts in the field of disability awareness that were able to, or at that point in time that was in my life, that was able to educate me on how to do things differently on a digital platform. Right. Um, and so.

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image description and alternative text or alt text was something that I thought, well, I'm, I can do that. Right? Like it's, it's going to take maybe 20 extra minutes, you know, but it's

30:36
It's not something that necessarily there's any other barrier. It's not unattainable because it's so expensive to do this thing on a digital platform. No, I can do that. But being educated on like how do you do that? And it can be very short and sweet. So something like, you know, there's two individuals sitting inside a room on sofas. The background is bookshelves. And then you can go into further detail.

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like one is a male and how you would identify one is a female. So it can be very simple and sweet or you can be you know really lengthy and go into great detail about it. And so it provides a level of accessibility for individuals with different disabilities. And so if you have that image description it provides again an additional choice for someone. It provides an extra layer of

31:36
accessibility and I think it also talks about I see you, right? Like I'm acknowledging your experience is different than mine. And so some of the works that I do are like these large scale braille pieces and it's not small tactile braille. So I did a series of backboards, vinyl backboards. I saw that. Yeah, that was so cool. And I did a mural when I was in Ireland that was similar.

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circular shapes, right? And it's the braille, blown up large scale, and then the question was, well, can I touch it? Right, can I read it tactily? And the answer is no, and it's not out of disrespect, it's about building awareness. And so it's also for me about saying, I see that someone has another experience that's different than mine, and I'm also wondering, have you not had that experience? So if I give that thing,

32:36
in a way that's like building awareness, oh, I see Braille, what is Braille? And then now I can ask questions about that, but then it also, you know, just might bring to light something that someone had just never thought about before. You can do that with the tactile, but then on these, I think that there's.

32:59
I'm drawn to being able to use Braille in different ways to have further those conversations about disability awareness. Yeah, after our conversation, I kept thinking about it because I was like, you know, I do a video and audio podcast. How can I be more inclusive in that way? So it just got me thinking, like, man, I started reading into it. This would be, like, how would I even go about?

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doing that and I'm figuring that out, but I think it's important because there are still people who watch or listen to podcasts. You know what I mean? So it's like, I want to be, if I'm talking about health equity and being inclusive, I should probably be. Well, no, but that's the thing. It's like, we don't, you know, those are the wonderful educational moments. Yes. Like this is, ah, yes. And now where do I go from here? Yep. Because that it's so diverse. When we talk about DEI

33:55
It's like, it's so vast and yes, so it's we're not going to know it all. We're human. We're going to get like you said, go step by step. And then if we know someone, then we can hopefully connect them to those services. So I always say like

34:11
There's great experts at the Harkin Institute with web accessibility that you can reach out to at any time. There's folks at Iowa Department for the Blind. One of my great friends, Bettina Dolencek, she does web accessibility. And so you can sit down, those folks can assess your page, right, and say this is working really great. Oh, cool. These are the areas where you can make improvements and this is some really simple ways that you could do it yourself. Oh, cool. Yeah. Oh, cool.

34:41
I want I need to I need to Awesome. Well Jill, thank you so much for being here. I didn't get to half the questions. I thought

34:55
Do like this over here, like real low so the camera can't see time. It was perfect. For those that want to know more about you, connect with you, where can they find you? Jillwellsart.com

35:14
And so that's my website. I have Instagram, which is Joe Wells art. I do Facebook, Joe Wells art. And then I have a studio at mainframe and fourth floor, four, four, seven. Folks can email me through my website and. Those would probably be, I'm a little obsessed with my email, so email me, I'm gonna email you back and I like to do one-on-ones.

35:41
but I'll do virtual zooms if folks want to get together that way. Cool. And as always, I have these in the description of the podcast episode. Um, again, Jill Wells, thank you. Thank you for being here. Uh, everybody. Thank you for listening to the healthy project podcast. I'll have you next time.