((Right) Artist Jesse Pemberton in his studio (Left) Aphelion (2024) by Jesse Pemberton)
If I were to retrace my steps, now mid-career, my journey into three-dimensional work began with the Elena Baskin fine art studios at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1995. Prior to this, my studio time had been drawing classes or tinkering in my parent’s garage, rummaging through coffee cans of hardware and my shoebox of model paints. I worked in a framing shop, spending my paychecks on discounted art supplies.
After completing my prerequisite drawing courses, I formally declared that I was an Art Student. I experimented with the obligatory ceramic vessels, raku glazes and various kilns. Learning sculpting and molding techniques of coiling, casting, and slab-relief led me to understand methods for larger construction. Artist Robert Arneson, known for his uncanny ability to transform pain into humor by willing clay into his own likeness and narrative, inspired the first of my life-sized self-portraits. I was feeling mentored, not only by my new professors (and actual mentor Nobuho Nagasawa) but by the influential artists of the 20th century.
The UCSC Arts Center allowed my physical work to evolve quickly upon each new discipline. Campus galleries and all-access studio courses engaged my development of new technical skills while still nudging me to find a narrative of my own. My notion of sculpture was moving beyond the creation of the object and into the vulnerable process of allowing one’s hands to speak for their respective soul. By taking more creative risks I was inviting failure, realizing for the first time that making art can be uncomfortable and personal. I still hadn’t found my true medium.
The pivot came in 1997 with welding steel and casting in the bronze foundry that shaped my personal focus on modern materials. I realized the purpose, financial value, fortitude – all attributes of the various ores and alloys – have been refined within a currency of belief, science and art. Metal is an iconic foundation of industry, religion and war.
I gravitate towards the post-war abstract modernists of the 1950’s balanced with Andy Goldsworthy’s work demonstrating interconnections within the natural world. With abstraction, we are capable of devising and communicating complex ideas by inserting (or removing) layers of perceived truths and symbolism. Abstract is everything the natural world is not.
After two artist’s residencies and tenure of my architectural fabrication business, I launched my solo art studio Design Deschutes in 2017. I joined the Central Oregon Metal Arts Guild (COMAG) and the Artists’ Gallery Sunriver cooperative. These relationships, both as mentee and mentor, have led me to teaching welding classes at the DIYcave and volunteer positions on the Deschutes Public Library Arts Committee and the High Desert Makers Board.
Thanks to art, I’m still embracing the value of taking risks and failures. Each pursuit has developed my body of work, filled exhibitions or ignited collaborative public art projects and friendships. Consider your own experience with art as vital, as it is infused in the whole spectrum of one’s expressive journey. Thank you for supporting the arts!
You can view Jesse Pemberton’s works at Artists’ Gallery Sunriver.