Jean Wells is an American artist known for her large-scaled and life-sized mosaic sculptures featuring pop-inspired objects such as ice cream cones, hamburgers, hot dogs, and candy. Like artists Andy Warhol and Jeff Koons, Wells offers consumerist images without obvious critique, yet subtle indications are detected by some who see clues to ideological substance beneath her works.

In her early career, Wells worked in graphic design and advertising but never stopped making art, mostly painting and sculpture. Today, her subjects blend postmodern pop culture iconography with autobiography. In recent years, she has shown at the San Diego Museum of Art, the La Jolla Athenaeum, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Juan Antonio Peréz Simón Collection in Mexico City, and many other notable institutions and galleries.

Wells debuted to the international art scene in 2007 with a solo show at the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park. Giant six-foot tall sculptures of ice cream cones and sundaes, life-sized “bathing beauties” at home in an earlier era, vintage sports cars and other pop-inspired objects related to her personal life and experiences populated a show that met with popular acclaim and sales.

That same year she began a program of creating large-scal sculptures for the prestigious international art fair circuit, in this case presenting her oversized Teddy Bear as well as a collection of her food-themed works and pop icons at Art Miami. She has since participated in numerous fairs including Basel, Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong, London, Aspen, Chicago, Santa Fe, San Francisco, New York, the Hamptons and many more, often with large pieces that have drawn wide audiences.

Wells is a prolific producer, all the more remarkable because she makes her work with very little studio assistance and each piece is unique. In 2008, Wells created a number of other life-sized or large-scaled works that also went on to major exhibitions: Conversation Piece is an oversized Princess phone measuring 4 feet wide that actually still functions as a phone was shown at the San Diego Museum. Mixed Messages, a piece that incorporates an actual traffic signal with the words “Walk, Don’t Walk” and a female form with long legs, was purchased in 2010 for The Wonder of Our World Art Collection of the Allure of the Seas luxury liner. Phantom, shown at the San Diego Air and Space Museum, features a 17-foot tall Phantom jet, a recycled piece of military hardware which the artist rescued from the graveyard at Gillespie Field and covered with brilliant red, silver and blue mirrored glass mosaics.