Yvonne Wells (born December 26, 1939, Tuscaloosa, Alabama) is an African-American folk artist and quilter from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She is best known for her self-taught style and her story quilts depicting scenes from the Bible and the Civil Rights Movement. Her work has been exhibited at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and at the International Quilt Museum. Early life Wells's mother was an elementary school teacher, and her father was a Presbyterian minister. As a child, she played sports competitively, including on a traveling softball team. Wells was one of nine children. Both her parents passed away before Wells had completed her Bachelor's degree at Stillman College, where she studied Physical Education. Her siblings also studied at Stillman. After college, Wells worked as a physical education instructor at Druid High School in Tuscaloosa, her alma mater, until in 1970 she was hired to teach at Tuscaloosa High School, where she experienced firsthand the struggles of school integration in Alabama. In 2009, recalling the civil rights era, she told an interviewer that “During that time it was the most tense time that I have ever experienced between the races. You could just almost cut it." Wells retired from teaching in 2000. Arts career Despite coming from a region renowned for African-American quilters like Mozell Benson, Nora Ezell, and the quilter’s cooperative in Gee's Bend, Wells did not grow up in a tradition of quilting and did not began her craft until middle age. She made her first quilt in 1979. A self-taught artist, Wells describes her process as born originally from a utilitarian desire for a warm garment, which spurred a long artistic career making more creative quilts. In 2010, Wells told American Studies professor Stacy Morgan, "[W]hen I first got started I was piecingmy kind of piecing. There was no pattern. It was just fabric, or curtains, or clothes, or socks, or anything that I was using at the onset." In 2011, Wells said that she had begun using a quilting frame, but that most of her work still took place sitting on the floor. In the mid-1980s, Wells began creating her signature "story" and "picture" quilts, incorporating a diverse range of found materials and sewing mostly by hand. Her 1986 quilt, "Crucifixion", which depicts the biblical scene, is the first example of a story quilt in her oeuvre. At her most prolific, Wells has