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I have been designing and making furniture from the late 60s to the present. It is one passion in my life that has been a constant. I have academic training in furniture design but my primary career has been in the private practice of psychotherapy. I have run my furniture design/consulting business as a part time venture for as long as I have practiced psychotherapy. Both of these activities have the capacity to cause frustration and anguish in the practitioner as well as a sense of centeredness and bliss. It is for those moments that I am both blessed and thankful.




I studied furniture design at Virginia Commonwealth University and at Penland School of Crafts. I took all the courses available in furniture at the time though I never received a degree. This had to do with being enrolled in a different masters program, counseling. Later I received a doctorate in counseling from The College of William & Mary with postdoctoral training in Marriage and Family Therapy from the Family Center at Georgetown University. I was already passionate about making furniture even before my masters degree. I continued my part time business/passion through two advanced degrees and twenty years of private practice in psychotherapy.

I have received a fine arts grant from the Virginia Museum to execute a series of furniture forms that were psychologically and spiritually inspired, The Secular Icon Series. I have also presented papers at the National Conference for the American Psychological Association on the same furniture series. At this stage of my life I am seeking a balance in which furniture begins to play a bigger role.




I have considered art furniture to be unnecessary if all one seeks is a place to sit, eat or lie down. One buys art furniture because it adds more than pure function to their environment. Building on this notion, some years ago I attempted to develop a series of pieces with elements that drew on Jungian or spiritual themes such as a balance in life, transcendence and self-awareness. I called this series Secular Icons. I was fortunate at the time to receive a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts that enabled me to build most of the pieces and show them in a number of venues. Since then, my work has taken numerous paths, but the influence of secular icons always lurks in the background.



Contact:
Tom Wessells
Phone:
757-930-3925
Email:
Tommot22@aol.com
Address: 4 Graham Drive
Newport News, Virginia 23606

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