BELLOWS FALLS-Local artist Tim Wells, who creates professionally as Tai Ericson, has a new show of his latest work — four intricate large portraits created in a painstaking collage technique and intended to carry a powerful message.
These first four portraits were made, Wells said, “to honor murdered transgender people, as part of a larger series combatting transphobia and the real harm it causes.”
The works, part of a planned series of 12, will be the first exhibit shown in a new Bellows Falls downtown restaurant, Elsewhere, which has just opened in the former Wunderbar location in the Square.
Wells has a simple description for how he creates his art: He uses “common objects in large quantities.”
The explanation may be simple, but the art hardly is.
“It’s taking the familiar, and finding the beauty in it,” he said.
Return to Bellows Falls
Wells said his journey to becoming an artist was not straightforward.
Now 42, he grew up in Connecticut and started college, seeking to get a degree in architecture. He switched from that major to studying art and woodworking and was “eventually coaxed into studying sculpture.”
His parents moved from Connecticut to Walpole, New Hampshire in 2004. He lived with them for a couple of summers while he was trying to sort out what he wanted to do with life, and he eventually enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“Bellows Falls was in the middle of nowhere when I was here at 20,” he said. But when he came back 20 years later to look after his mother, he and his partner, hairstylist Erica Daniels, decided to move to the area from Boston.
They bought two buildings at 92 and 94 Rockingham St., remodeled them, moved here permanently in 2023, and opened a hair salon and arts studio. They have since sold the buildings but continue to operate their businesses downtown.
Art from common objects in large quantities
Wells has used thumbtacks to create a formal gown, staples and binder clips to create three-dimensional sculptures, Styrofoam balls to make a blanket, and — in the case of these collages — pages from books cut into thousands of tiny pieces, which he then painstakingly glues into striking, realistic portraits.
But Wells is not using pages from just any books in these collages. They are very specifically cut-up pages from one of the most successful series in history: the seven volumes of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books.
Using deconstructed books to create art pieces had long been on Wells’s mind, “but I had to find a why for cutting them up,” he said. “It’s generally frowned upon to destroy a book, except controversial books.”
Rowling began making antitransgender comments on social media in 2018 and 2019 and then made a public issue of her views — and left little to interpretation — when she published a 4,000-word essay in 2020.
Wells, described by trans author Alexandra Billings as “an ally on a mission,” said he found his reason to deconstruct some books. He also knew the books he would use for the project — Rowling’s.
“Particularly queer people found a safe refuge in the [Harry Potter] world she created,” said Wells, who was once a fan of the series, initially beloved by young people for its literary universe and Rowling’s themes of acceptance and support of people and their differences.
“Then she turned around and stabbed them in the back,” he said.
Cutting up and pasting his own copies of the Harry Potter books, Wells made his first portrait. It was of Ra’Lasia Wright, a Minneapolis trans woman killed in 2024, whose case remains unsolved.
He finished that first portrait in July of 2025 after two months of work.
“The portraits destroy [Rowling’s] work,” Wells said, “replacing it with a memorial to someone who lost their life to the [anti-LGBTQ culture] that she fosters.”
This project “seeks to provide healing to multiple generations of queer readers who once found refuge in the magical world” that Rowling created, Wells said, “only to have it erased by the author’s cruel and harmful actions.”
The second portrait is of Sam Nordquist, a 24-year-old trans man from Minnesota who was lured to upstate New York, where he was kidnapped for two months, tortured, and then brutally murdered in February 2025.
The third, of Sara Millerey Gonzalez, a Columbian woman who was assaulted and murdered in 2025 while onlookers filmed the murder and posted it online, took five months.
“I’m getting slower!” Wells said, laughing. “But it’s never about the time. I’m not intimidated by the time involved.”
Though done mostly in black and white, each of the portraits also includes a flower in color, cut from pieces of the books’ covers.
The flower is a “signature move” in each of the paintings, Wells said, and he’s redoing the second portrait to include one. Using the flower motif from the portraits, he’s also created colorful pins, which people can buy, with proceeds supporting the project.
Online interest
Wells has a strong online presence as artist Tai Ericson, named for his father, Eric, who died in 2021.
“I knew that social media was going to play a significant role in my business model,” Wells explained. “A persona just allows me to have a little separation from the spotlight I was hoping to get and my real life. I’m a very quiet introverted person, promoting Tai Ericson, and pushing the work of Tai Ericson is just easier for me.”
In first publishing these portraits on Instagram and TikTok, Wells says he has gotten a “relatively big” response. The first portrait is approaching a million views, and he has 35,000 followers on Instagram and 12,400 on TikTok.
Something else began to happen to the project as more people around the world discovered it. Wells’s followers began to donate their copies of the Harry Potter books — books that readers “used to access the magic” of the Harry Potter world Rowling created — for future works.
He just crossed the 1,000-book threshold with donations of the books in several languages, including Dutch, Hindi, Japanese and Italian. Some 12 to 15 books continue to arrive weekly.
“It’s a catharsis,” he said. “People want to send me their books, to be part of this project.”
Wells says he has more books than he needs, but he already has a future project that will use them.
Prints of the portraits sell for $125; he’s sold over 90 of the first piece in a year, and he gets several orders a week. He’s limiting the prints to 125 for each piece, and he donates 20% of the proceeds from each print to one of four LGBTQ advocacy organizations.
In the case of Sam Nordquist, the proceeds from the sale of his portrait go to Nordquist’s family.
Seven people were charged with his murder, and last month the two leaders of the group were sentenced to life in prison without parole. Two more have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. Three others who have pleaded not guilty are scheduled to go to trial in 2027.
While the first four portraits feature trans people who suffered violent deaths, Wells said that the next four will feature “living, prominent, and successful” trans people.
The final four portraits will be of “trans icons from the past” he said, such as Sylvia Rivera, an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist from New York City.
“I want the art to show that trans people are not a new fad,” Wells said. “These are real people, real lives.”
For more information about Wells‘s artwork, visit ericsonarts.com . Elsewhere is open at 22 Rockingham St., Bellows Falls. To learn more about the restaurant, visit instagram.com/elsewhere.bellowsfalls .
This News item by Robert F. Smith was written for The Commons.