0.29 Charles pebworth, b. 1926

Getting here

In 1953 my wife and I were students at the University of Oklahoma, and then we decided to get married, so I came to Houston at the end of the semester. I got a job at Foley’s and my wife came down to Houston on the train from Norman—she came into Houston at the station which is now the entrance to the Astros ballpark. She arrived at that station in 1953 and I had a job at Foley’s where practically all the young people in Houston got their start in those days: in the display department. I was going to the University of Houston, so I graduated in 1955 and got a teaching assistantship at LSU. I was in Baton Rouge for two years, then came back to Texas here at Sam Houston in Huntsville, teaching in the art department. In 1961 I went to Houston. It was time. A friend of mine said, “Let’s go to Houston and get a gallery.”

Getting started

There were only maybe two or three [galleries] at the time, and I didn’t know it. The first one we went to was Meredith Long, and he had just started a gallery on Westheimer where Highland Village is now. So we said, “You want to show our work?” and he says yes. We left our work and for a few months, nothing happened. So I picked up my work and took it home, then went back to Huntsville. I was friends with Stella Sullivan and Ed Mayo and Norma Henderson in particular because they had bought work of mine at that period of time out of the gallery in Conroe that Stella Sullivan was involved with. I remember Dick Wray came to my show in Conroe, and Norma and Ed Mayo. Ed Mayo in particular and Stella Sullivan said, “Why don’t you go see Ben DuBose? He has the Bute Gallery in River Oaks there.” My first experience in Houston wasn’t that great, but they said, “He likes your work.” So I went to see Ben, and he says, yeah, he’d take my work. I don’t know if I would have ever gone there—it was the old Bute Gallery, and it was in the old Bute’s Paint Store. All the local artists were there at that time.

Grace David had just started David Gallery, and I think there were a couple of other galleries, but I chose to go with Ben and everything started happening for me because he had a show for me and things started selling. Then after a couple of years Ben wanted to develop the gallery and minimize the paint aspect of the thing, and Bute said no. Ben said, “Well, I need for you to put the money that I’m generating into the gallery,” and they said no. And he said, “Well, I’m going to go ahead and form my own gallery.” So he went over to Kirby Drive. People trusted Ben DuBose because he was a mentor figure for a great number of artists in Houston.

In the fifties

People were starting to notice the art scene in Houston. And at that time, I was in the gallery and drove every Tuesday to Houston to take new work to the gallery. Then I started teaching at the Museum school