When Wells went to lunch at the college dining room, a group of students always gathered around his piece, watching the progress and remarking about the careful and intuitive way he was working. When he came back he would walk around the room and touch each student-piece, talk a little about it and make a few suggestions, passing easily from one table to another. It would seem that he was not really "instructing" the student. But he was a powerful presence just by his being there, especially by his working along with the students in that room day in and day out. His teaching was done by his personal presence, his atmosphere, and above all by the work he was doing among them. It was as if they were in the atelier of a fifteenth century Italian master sculptor, allowed to watch as long as they kept their hands busy working on their own pieces. This seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, the highest level of teaching. One might call it in Chinese manner the "Teaching-No-Teaching-Method."
-- William Harris "Charles Wells: Sculptor and Printmaker"
Charles Wells etchings
