Born in 1934 in Evergreen Park, Illinois, Woell earned a degree in economics in 1956 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) before serving two years in the United States Army. Upon returning to Illinois, Woell pursued a second UIUC degree, a BFA. It was during this stint at the university that Woell took a course in art metal and jewelry from the renowned metalsmith Robert von Neumann. This experience inspired Woell to pursue his graduate degree in metalsmithing. He received an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in June of 1962.

Upon graduating from UW-Madison, Woell taught art in primary and secondary schools for two years, during which he met and worked for the sculptor Frank Gallo. In 1967 Woell received a scholarship to study sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He graduated from this program with his second MFA in June 1969. After graduating, the artist spent four years teaching in the University of Wisconsin school system. During this time Woell had his first one-man shows at he Museum of Contemporary Crafts and the Lee Nordness Gallery in New York.

Woell moved to Deer Isle, Maine, in 1973 to join the staff at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. He worked and taught at Haystack intermittently through 2001. From 1976 to 1987 Woell was a professor of art metals at Boston University. He also taught at State University of New York at New Paltz from 1989 through 1993. He retired from his teaching career in 2001.