New Bedford Guide Your Guide to New Bedford and South Coast, MA
Meet Alison Wells, 44-year-old Artist and College professor.
Alison grew up on the island of Trinidad, where from a very early age she knew that she wanted to be an artist when she grew up. One day in class, a teacher embarrassed her for her grandeur ideas and told her she would most likely starve if she tried to make a living with art. This deterred her from keeping that a reality.
Once she graduated high school, she attempted to pursue a degree in architecture, as it seemed like the best way to blend art and a very plausible career. Becoming easily bored after a year, she received a letter notifying her she had received the scholarship she applied for 2 years earlier, to the Edna Manly College of Visual and Performing Arts in Jamaica. It was there she received a Bachelors in Fine Arts.
She returned to Trinidad, where she worked in advertising and teaching high school for quite some time, until her former teacher urged her to get her Master’s degree. After taking a huge leap of faith, she moved to New Bedford, alone and without any friends or family, enrolled at UMass Dartmouth’s masters program.
She fell in love with New Bedford, as the coastline city gave an island girl like herself a sense of comfort. Alison had come to New Bedford at a unique time in the city’s history, as the artists of the area were developing a renaissance, that has had ripple effects on the art scene we have seen develop over the last decade.
She graduated from UMass and began teaching drawing and painting between there and Bristol Community College. She loves that she has been able to turn what she has loved her entire life into a reality and that New Bedford played in integral part in it.
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