Dr. J. Kim Sessums is an American artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

 and physician

Physician

A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

, best known for his sculptures. Sessums resides in Brookhaven, Mississippi

Brookhaven, Mississippi

Brookhaven is a small city in Lincoln County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 9,861 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Lincoln County...

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Sessums earned his medical degree at the University of Mississippi

University of Mississippi

The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...

. The University later installed his six-foot statue of University of Mississippi

University of Mississippi

The University of Mississippi, also known as Ole Miss, is a public, coeducational research university located in Oxford, Mississippi. Founded in 1844, the school is composed of the main campus in Oxford, four branch campuses located in Booneville, Grenada, Tupelo, and Southaven as well as the...

 football coach John Vaught on the campus.

Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century....

 offered to pose for Sessums. When the sculpture was finished, Wyeth remarked,

We've done it. I think we've really got something here. This is why I waited. The other works just didn't have the bite yours does.

Sessums sculptures of Wyeth, Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty

Eudora Alice Welty was an American author of short stories and novels about the American South. Her novel The Optimist's Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973. Welty was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among numerous awards. She was the first living author to have her works published...

 and Billy Graham

Billy Graham

William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian evangelist. As of April 25, 2010, when he met with Barack Obama, Graham has spent personal time with twelve United States Presidents dating back to Harry S. Truman, and is number seven on Gallup's list of admired people for...

 were parts of those individuals' personal collections.

Sessums was honored with a Mississippi Senate resolution in 2004 for his work on the then recently dedicated African-American Monument in the Vicksburg National Military Park

Vicksburg National Military Park

Vicksburg National Military Park preserves the site of the American Civil War Battle of Vicksburg, waged from May 18 to July 4, 1863. The park, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Delta, Louisiana, also commemorates the greater Vicksburg Campaign, which preceded the battle. Reconstructed forts and...

, commissioned by the National Park Service

National Park Service

The National Park Service is the U.S. federal agency that manages all national parks, many national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations...

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Sessums sculptured the Cellular South Howell Trophy, which is given to the top four-year college men's basketball player in Mississippi. He also sculptured the Cellular South Gillom Trophy, which is given to the top four-year college women's basketball player in Mississippi.

Personal life

Sessums has four children with his wife, Kristy. Though he is best known as an artist, he maintains his medical practice. His brother is writer Kevin Sessums

Kevin Sessums

Kevin Sessums is an American author, editor and actor from Forest, Mississippi. Sessums served as executive editor of Interview and as a contributing editor of Vanity Fair, Allure, and Parade. His work has also appeared in Travel+Leisure, Elle, Out, Marie Claire, and Playboy...

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