Pebworth’s inclusion into the Native American Choctaw tribe along with his upbringing on an Osage reservation, are elements that frequently appear in his major artworks. Primarily known for his metalwork, the works frequently include references to the natural world and Native American imagery. Story-making forms and ancient myths, along with the signs and signals of written native language, are Pebworth’s instinctual guide through a robust lifelong artistic practice. In The Element of Right, Native American symbols provide us an entry point into the work. A flat surfaced plaque, pieced together like an elegant jigsaw puzzle, reveals a seed-like center, perhaps with two figures in a ritual dance. The Choctaw peoples understood the sun as the center of their cosmological system. They were a sun-worshiping tribe and frequently used circular forms in the center of their artworks and language-symbols. The center seed on the plaque is germinated by this omnipresent sun, the origins of life. In the Choctaw written language, two half circles symbolize the moon. Here, the two half circles face one another in a duality that appears between man and woman, sun and moon, seed and fruit, inside and outside. 

Apart from Native American influence, Pebworth also considered European influences for his works when he reflects, “I was influenced by German sculptors, along with Constantin Brancusi and Henry Moore.” In Pebworth’s metalworks, the ancient mixes with the Modern, revealing distinct similarities between the two eras, conflating time and space, and challenging our notions of what an “era” of time actually is. In gleaming polished aluminum, the material shines like the sun. The artist preferred to work in aluminum, as it is a simultaneously strong and pliable material, and with its reflective shine gives a joyful attractive surface. This high-polished shimmer Pebworth usually balances with one or more natural wooden elements. Many times Pebworth encases his metalworks in strong thick wooden “frames,” providing an earthy organic groundedness. The two materials work together and compliment one another–the wooden yin to the metal yang–in a way that reveals the aluminum’s original materiality before it was appropriated by the modern machine-age.    

Pebworth early on sought to become a career soldier, signing up for the Navy during WWII far before he was of age to join. Determined, he enrolled in the Air Force, where they asked less questions. In 1948 he came back to Texas and enrolled in Baylor University’s art program and  studied painting. Pebworth traveled to Korea to serve in the war with the Army and returned from combat in 1951 to enroll in the University of Oklahoma’s art department, where he met his wife (of sixty five years) in art class. Pebworth obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Houston with an emphasis in drawing and immediately afterward earned his MFA from Louisiana State University with a focus on sculpture. Public artworks are an important part of the artist’s legacy in Texas where he received several important commissions. One of his most iconic public works, Garden of the Mind, a large-scale metal relief (at twenty seven feet high and fifty feet wide) was commissioned by the Hyatt Regency Downtown Houston and installed in 1972. Another grand scale metalwork came from The Woodland’s founder George Mitchell who commissioned Pebworth to make a large public artwork for the entrance to The Woodlands. The finished work, The Family (1974) welcomes everyone to the inventive neighborhood. With his extensive experience in art and leadership, Pebworth gained a tenured teaching position at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, where he would work for thirty six years as a professor of art (1957-1993).