Charles Pebworth was born in 1926. A member of the Choctaw tribe, he grew up on an Osage reservation in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. A poor student, he left high school early to join the Navy during World War II. To enlist, Pebworth—who was underage for military service—forged his parent’s signature on draft documents. The Navy, upon learning that he was a mere high schooler, dismissed Pebworth. Remarkably, Pebworth then entered the Army Air Corp and subsequently the Army. After the armistice was signed, Pebworth, using his GI bill, studied at the Art Center in Los Angeles, Pasadena City College, and Baylor University. In 1950, Pebworth again left school for soldiery. After one year of fighting in the Korean War, Pebworth returned to his studies, this time at the University of Oklahoma. He soon left Oklahoma for Texas, where he finally received his undergraduate degree from the University of Houston. Pebworth then left Houston to earn a two year MFA in sculpture from Louisiana State University.

In 1957, Pebworth, who had earned a reputation for being artistically nonconformist, joined the faculty at Sam Houston State University, where he would remain for thirty-six years. Over the course of his career, Pebworth exhibited numerous times, most notably at the Moody Gallery in Houston, Circle Gallery in New Orleans, the Witte Museum in San Antonio, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Jocelyn Art Museum. In an interview published after Pebworth’s passing in 2019, Randy Tibbits—a founding member of the Houston Earlier Texas Art Group—said the following about Pebworth’s oeuvre: “What exuberant, distinctive art it is. You know a Pebworth piece from across the room or across the vast lobby, in some cases, since many of his mixed media wall works in metals, woods, stones literally filled lobby walls in buildings around Houston and beyond.”

Undulating with a natural fluidity, Untitled resembles an oversized, unweathered fragment of body armor. This brilliant fragment, with its watch-like settings and asymmetrical intricacies, invites the viewer to explore its harmonious inner workings. When focusing on Unitiled’s materiality, one must acknowledge the way the designed metals utilize, mimic, and manipulate the phenomena of the physical world sans humanity. Like a fish to an artificial lure, the viewer gravitates to the artwork’s biomimetic design. This design, with its flowing edges and topographical dips, is fully fabricated, fully synthetic. The exuberant and distinctive hand of the artist, Pebworth’s fingerprint, gleams from the metal. This fingerprint reinforces the notion that Untitled is manufactured and thereby tethered to humanity. In Untitled, Pebworth employed the illusions and effects of the natural, with its chaotic cohesion, to create a precise, balanced, and ordered artwork.