Sketchbooks: Process, Play & Practice

The exhibition at Endicott College

I was turned down from a UK art school more than twenty years ago. The feedback? My work was “too decorative.”

Now, more than twenty years later, I am excited to have a solo exhibition at Endicott College, a respected institution in the US.

Sketchbooks with Soul: Process, Play & Practice brings together large-scale scans of my sketchbook pages. (Visitor information below).

The same kind of pages I’ve been making for years: personal, layered, exploratory. I didn’t imagine they’d ever be shown in a gallery, let alone one within a bustling art school...

This feels like a small yet meaningful inflection point.

Having my sketchbook pages at the heart of an art school is just wonderful. I champion the importance and value of an art education; the world needs more artists and more creative thinkers.

Perhaps this can serve as a small moment of encouragement: keep going, follow your own unique path, despite the odd obstacle, we get where we’re going eventually.

This video is shown as part of the exhibition

My love of sketchbooks

I love sketchbooks.

A sketchbook is a place to work things out and figure out who we want to be as artists. Both a place and a practice to help us unearth our unique interests and fascinations.

Sketchbooks are not about perfection. They are places to investigate ideas, follow instincts, and stay connected to the act of making art.

Over time, sketchbooks show the shape of a practice. They reveal what the artist returned to, what felt worth pursuing, and how ideas developed across time.

The value isn’t in any one page, but in the consistency of working things out, again and again. Letting ideas percolate. Having a place to come back to. A safekeeping place for ideas and half-formed fragments of ideas.

Exhibition details

Helen Wells, Sketchbooks with Soul: Process, Play & Practice

Tuesday, January 20–Friday, April 17 2026

Hours: 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

Visit at: Carol Grillo Gallery, Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts, Endicott College,

406 Hale Street, Beverly, MA 01915.

If you have any questions about visiting, the gallery director’s email is thansen@edicott.edu