Yvonne Wells: Quilting the Past, Teaching the Future

Welcome back to She Pivots. I'm Yvonn Wells.

Welcome back to She Pivots, the podcast where we talk with women who dare to pivot out of one career and into something new and explore how their personal lives impacts these decisions. I'm your host, Emily Tish Sussman. Today I had the absolute pleasure of debuting the incredible story of Ivonn Wells for the first time ever on a podcast. Yvon is a folk artist who creates the most striking quilts that depict stories from the civil rights movement and

I am Yvonne Wells, and I make story quilts.

Okay, so we're gonna go. We're gonna go to LITTLELEVDD. You are one of nine siblings, correct, which sounds like a whole lot of fun, a whole lot of chaos. And where do you chaos?

Mostly?

Where do you fall in the birth order?

I'm number eight. It was seven girls and two boys. Seven of us were born in the thirties, two were not. The oldest was born in twenties and the youngest was born in forties. But the rest of us were born in the thirties, So my mama had seven babies and ten years.

Oh my goodness is wild. So did you end up being the youngest? Did you end up with a lot of responsibility at home or did your siblings mostly take care of you? Like, how did it work in your family?

Well, no, I'm the one who did mostly everything. They did some however, as well. But if there was something that needed to be fixed or needed to be done, it was always Yvonne. So I was considered a tomboy and I could do all of this stuff. If something needed to be hammered, moved on, the yard needed mowing, I'm Yvonne, the tomboy they knew.

Did you think about being a grown up? Like, did you ever think about what you wanted to be when you grew up?

I know I didn't think. I always thought I would be a grown up, but I didn't know which direction I would go in. However, it was placed in our mind and our souls and our bodies that each of you would go to college. So we all did go to Stillman College, which was in walking distance from our home.

That's quite remarkable at the time. It's remarkable under any circumstances for all nine siblings to go to college, but certainly in the South at the time. Yes, And did everyone live at home? And why was that important to her?

Well? She always said, in order to get a better way of life, in order to do well in life, you're going to have to have education so that you will know what to do to have a prosperous life. Education was the way out, she would say. So that's why it was extremely important for us to go to college. Each of my aunts in office all went to college. Doctor Hardy was the president of Stillman College moment tarily and my mother's everybody taught school, but everybody went to college.

Yvonne did as her mother wished and attended Stillman College, and it wasn't long before she met her husband.

Sure we were in school at Stilmam together and I was one year ahead of him in nineteen fifty eight. I think he came in nineteen fifty eight and I graduated in nineteen fifty seven. I was already there when he came in. And when he came in, I saw him. I said, well, there's nice looking guy. But I was told that he was already consumed by other women. I said, okay, I just leave it alone. But as time went on, that finally changed.

Was it always clear that you were going to go into teaching and to education.

Not always clear. It wasn't always clear because at one time I thought I wasn't going to go at all. But somehow we were able to manage to get enough resources. And my husband was the caregiver of the financial giver at that time, so he finished up my years on my final years of college. Oh, he had to stop college because his finances were unable to continue his educational goal. He joined the Marines, and that's how we got the assistant that I needed to continue.

So when you started as a teacher, you worked as a teacher during the height of school integration in Alabama.

I did.

You were one of the first teachers to integrate Tuscalousa High School. What did you see during those years?

What was your role? Well, when I was informed that I was going to be transferred to Tuscaloosa High School, I went to the principal's office and told him, no, I can't go there because I'm a little strict on students as far as doing what I asked you to do. But I love them all and I would buy them anything and hug them and all that kind of thing. But I felt that I was not the right person at the right time to do this job. And he said, well,

The tensions of that time were immense. Yvonne described it as quote the most tense time that I've ever experienced between the races. You could almost cut it so much so that tension turned to violence. During her classes, this.

Is one of the places I saw the most blood that I had seen in my life come from a live person. It appeared to me that they came to the gym because that was a big area, you know, lots of space fights with two by fours and whatever thing they could pick up. And they were fighting, and I'm trying to break them up from a district and I knew not to get in between them because that was dangerous, but we had to always call police in. I said, well, my goodness, this is not education. This

But still a Vanstine true to her nature and became a beloved teacher to countless students. Eventually they would find her and thank her.

They have found me because I'm not in the community all the time doing stuff, and they would come up and say, aren't you miss Wells. I said yes. She said you taught me in school, and you taught me well That touched my heart. She said, you taught me how to live and how to talk, how to my parents and all of that. And I did. And I'm so glad to know that I had made some impact. But I hear that quite often, and it makes me feel really good that my teaching was not in vain.

And despite your long career as a teacher, you pursued many interests over the years. You became a certified notary, a licensed funeral director, a certified emergency medical technician, and you had to kids. Oh.

I think the more I did, the better I felt, because each of those that you have mentioned always had the intention of helping someone, helping someone who needed help. I a licensed paramedic. I was a license paramedic for years, and I got that because as a physical education teacher, you are not always in the building. You're far away from your class. Because when I would take them outside to play ball, the field was way way way away from a classroom. So I said, gosh, what would happened

Yeah, and what about a notary and a licensed funeral director. Yes, a notary. I still am a notary. When I got the notary and I did volunteer work at a community's service organization. It's called temporary emergency service where we give stuff to people who need it. And a lot of times the students people would come in who were trying to get their kids in school or trying to get water turned on something, but they had to be notarized, and I was there to assist them. However, I'm just

Yes, it was very rewarding because at funerals it's a time you at your most vulnerable time. You don't know how to be sad and you don't know how to be happy. So I was always there to talk to the family and go get the family, give them whatever they want, take them, go with them to the to the grave site, and just be there as a as a help, but be there for consolation or for somebody's head to lie down on. I just lost my sister about three weeks three months ago, and I know the

I'm sure you were such a comfort to them.

I love it today and I've always loved it.

Yeah, so let's start talking about your quilting. You're a self taught quilter. How did you first learn to sew?

I don't know if I was consider it sewing, but I remember my mother would tell us to patch to sew your socks up because they had holes in it. I guess it was a manden. So I will put two bitch stitches in it, and I call that sewing. However, when it came down to making a quilt, I just didn't know what to do. That was not in my way of thinking. Who would have thought Yvonne would be making quilt making quilts because I'm busy. I'm busy all the time, as far as in this concern. It became

Yvonne let the joy of the craft guide her creating quilts in a bit of an unconventional way, a way that she calls my way.

I had seen quilts that were made by other people and I thought they were extremely beautiful, and I still do. And I actually tried to make a piece well, and I did, but it was made my way, not like it was like there were patterns or anything, but it was made my way and I enjoyed that and I liked it. Look, I wasn't told how to do it. I didn't know if it worked.

That's her beloved dog, you hear in the back. He'll make himself known in the background every now and then throughout the episode.

I didn't know if it worked. I just didn't. But I did continue to say I did it in my way because it was me. Nobody told me anything. When I did it and it got through, I said, oh gosh, this looks good. And I said, okay, well I'll continue. And that's how I get started. You know, I was making them as fast as I could think and as fast as I could stitched them, which was very fast at the time. Enjoyed every minute of it.

For years, she just created and created, reveling in the pleasure of the moment. But the quilting community wasn't as open to her nonconformist designs.

When I first started going to Kentuck the festival, I would go up, my son would put up this huge, this huge tent, and there are people will come by because I had at least eight quilt showing at one time, and they go up and look at it, and it was so it was to me really heartbreaking. They walk up and say, oh, gosh, this is John. Look at these big stitches. No. I didn't have an answer for that because I didn't know anything else. My stitches are large, but that was who I am. Oh this is nothing

And then at what point did you shift from simply creating to selling your quilts?

Like I said before, I never thought I would sell them, but the number of quilts that I was producing led me to believe, now, I don't have enough room in the house to put these. So years passed by and I met a man who had a gallery downtown and who was interested in quilts, and especially the black person's quilts. I said, oh, well, okay, so he came over. He and his wife came over and looked at what I was seeing, and he just fell in love with what I was doing and told me to show it to

When you say your way and your vision. Are you talking about how they're very they're pictorial, they depict scenes. Was having them be visual and pictorial always part of the vision for you of the quilt, Like, did they ever evolve in that sense?

Well, there was an evolution early on after I made a quilt called a Mothership. It was from a pattern and I showed it to Robert Caringo. I've heard the name before, and he said, he thinks this is a story. I said, well, how do you think it's a story? He said, wellther yoused to call it mother ship has the babies and dad's a mother and she's calling them on. I said, oh, I didn't know that. So after being told that, I said, shoot, I think I can make a story because I see so much. I see and

Out of them basically, and I think that was probably the thing that attracted me most about her work is the storytelling or the narratives that are in each.

Of the quilt. So I'm here at the International Quilt Museum back in the archives today. There are over ten thousand quilts, textiles, and quilted objects here in the collection, and I'm standing in front of my one of my very favorite quilts. This is a gorgeous quilt made by Yvonne Wells in nineteen eighty seven, and it's called Going Home.

So when you're creating your quilts and coming up with the story, which comes first? Do you see the fabrics and are you inspired? Does the story become inspired by the fabric or do you think of the story that you want to tell and you go out and find the materials.

I think I do all of that first, however, or I must see it. I got to see it first in my mind. Then I have to think about it. Then I have to feel it in my heart if this is the way that I want to go with the story, or am I to look at something else. Let me say this, I don't jump right into the story making the quilt until I have almost completely finished the quilts itself, because as I make the quilts sometimes the story change.

If you have a lot of religious themes and civil rights themes, I do. Are there particular stories you're trying to tell through the civil rights stories? Are you recreating things that you've seen or more things that you envision?

It could be both. I could be all of those. It was my intention and it is still today that I would put down in a quilt history. Because I was during this of rights era, that's my era, and so much was going on. I said, gosh, let me just see if I could put some of this down in my way. But like I said, as a teacher, I always wanted to have something that a child or somebody else can look at it and say, oh, is this the way it was? Or I'll go worried about it.

Evonne's quilts have traveled the world, from the Smithsonian to France to Japan. There's no question her work has achieved her dream and intention of educating viewers through her depictions. After the break, we dived into a Vaughn's mindset. She expanded her work as a folk quilt artist, all while teaching full time and raising her family. Did you think about becoming an artist full time while you were still working as a teacher, because you stayed doing both for a long time.

I did. I never thought I was an artist. I never to well to this day they say I'm beginning to to envelop that title. But I never thought I was an artist. I just thought I was somebody who made quilts. But I'm like I said, I begin to take it in now because this has been so much attention given to my staff, and I'm pleased to deafoot title artist is way way out of my thank you.

You've noted that you had a lot of anxiety at first around showing your quilts to the world. How did you overcome that?

Well, I saw some acceptance because at first, like I tell you, it was criticized and it didn't look like anything any quotures had ever made. I became more embolded because there were people saying, Oh, this is good, this looks good, it tells a great story. And then I had the determination not to stop. I was bound and determined. I was determined that I was going to keep this going as long as I could, whether they liked it or not. I did. I did. I got to that point. I did.

I love that. I think some people get discouraged if the thing they want doesn't show immediate returns for them or recognition right away. How long do you think it was between when you started quilting and gaining recognition that you felt was meaningful.

When I first got my first award at Kentuck, I was knocked off my feet because my stuff looked funny. I was hanging them on barbed wire, tree limbs, chairs and everything. But at the end of the day, I wanted best to show. And after that I said, well, wait a minute, there is something going on that they saw that I wasn't seeing. And from that point on, I think I begun to see that I did have something a little bit different, and it was feeling good. To me. So that's how it just kept moving and

She did. Even when she retired from teaching, Avon barely slowed down.

Now it's supposed to say I didn't see any change in what I was doing when I was teaching, as when I retired. That was no change other than I was home all the time after retiring most of the time. But I did stuff like mold of yards and cut the flowers into trees and all that kind of stuff, and fix the houses of things. I was doing something all the time, but still creating at the same time that I was when I was teaching. I never thought I would come home and sit and rock, even though

You know this moment is amazing. You are an artist or having a real renaissance in the art work. Why do you think it's all happening right now?

I don't know why it's all happening at one time, which is almost I thought I wasn't going to make it through. But things are tapering you off some But I have other things going on, but not as big unless somebody says they want me to do a bigger show. Things are beginning to taper down as far as big stuff. But why I'm out of here? Why am i here? I don't know. But apparently others think it's good, and the people in the right places think it's worth that.

Your quilts have handed up in some remarkable places. Can you tell us where they bended up?

Well, I can't tell you every place because I forget where they have been. I was chosen to go to France as one of the thirteen Alabama artists to show our work. My work it's been there. I've been to Italy right now. In Paris, I have an exhibition going on in the Hyatt Museum, and I have one piece in the Quilt Museum of African American culture. You know, at the time, someone call and say, I saw your

Do still doing it. You even created an ornament for the White House.

I cheer that. Oh, you talking about big stuff to me. I was able to call up there and talk to somebody in the Blue Room or the White House. You don't know how that beat that was. That was in nineteen ninety three, I believe, and they were looking for and are artist in every state to make an ornament for the Christmas tree in the Blue Room. I was recommended by Robert Carclow to do this, and I said, no, you kidding me. So I was accepted and I did

Yvonne's success after success post retirement is a testament that life is never linear or as you may expect. And she's not done yet. I vonn has more in store for us when we return. Stay tuned and tell us about the inspiration for writing your book.

Oh boy, oh boy. It has been talked about for many years. I don't know if you know Stacey Morgan, doctor Morgan, but he's a professor at the University of Alabama here and we have been friends for many years. I would go to his class at the university and talk to his class about my work because he was one of those people who were very much supportive. So he wanted me to talk to his class, and I

I like to think about what different phases look like and what success means like how we define success for ourselves through our different phases of our lives. How do you think you define success for yourself right now?

The fact that from the when I first started, there was a bud I moved on. The butt began to open up. As time went on, it got large and larger, and right now I'm at the apex of this folk art quilt. So I think that's how it got to be this point. And what is success? This is to me a success And the fact that my children are seeing the fruits of my labor means very, very lock to me. So I think this is it. However, I don't plan to stop. But it may not be as many, but I don't plan to stop.

So I asked this question of all of my guests, what is one thing that at the time maybe you considered to be kind of a low, but now you see it as something that really set you up for the success that you are now.

My husband was a military person and when he came back from Vietnam, he had all kinds of issues, major issues, and that was that was very low. We had to learn how to adjust to live in with him. The kids didn't understand the military airs that he would do. He was he was tougher than I was, you know, and that was that was at a time that was very low. But I proceeded without allowing him to allow the situation to hold me back. I kind of involved him in my work by asking what you think, do

Do you think you'll pivot again?

Yes, I don't know. What it is yet, But I think I will. I really do, because I have had things going through my mind. But it is it is through fabric that I'm still seeing things that is different from what I'm doing now.

Oh okay, So I hope.

I can get something done by this year. Oh that I'll let you know that I'm headed in a new direction. Well, keep us posted. We like it.

Do you think it gave you a new source of inspiration?

I think so. The inspiration really comes when I have completed a piece of work and I look down at it because it's on the floor. I'd sometimes standing on the table and look down on it and say, boy, this looks good. Oh boy, it says what I wanted to say. Oh boy, I have created a piece of art.

I loved it so great. It's so wonderful to talk to you, of honor, it is amazing.

Well, thank you. I just wanted to make sure I said something about the people who helped me along.

Oh please.

And that's more than Stacy Morgan and Robert Cargo. I'm represented by fort Yanzi Ort now in New York. So those are the people I want to say thank you to. And plus there are others whose name I can't call. Wants to say thank you to them as well, and thanks to you guys.

Absolutely, thank you so much. Evonn Oh, it has.

Been my pleasure.

Yvonne still lives in the same place she has spent her whole life, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she is surrounded by her beloved family and community. She currently has an exhibition at Fort gansa Ort Gallery in New York City. You can purchase her book, The Story of Quilting wherever you buy books. For more on a Vaughn, follow us on Instagram at she pivots the Podcast. We do our best to keep you up to date on all our guests. Talk to you next time. Thanks for listening to this