Jesse Pemberton of Design Deschutesworks in his studio on a new series titled "Circumpunct," made of steel and rare earth magnets.

In late January 2020, Jesse Pemberton, this week’s featured artist in the Central Oregon Creative Artists Relief Effort, took a vacation to Thailand with his wife and their young daughter, Aven, and son, Toren, now 4 and 6, respectively.

In early February, “The airwaves started lighting up with this virus that was coming out of China,” Pemberton said. Just a week and a half prior, they’d flown through Taipei, Taiwan, and the return path seemed daunting.

“We thought, how are we going to do this? How are we going to negotiate where we are geographically on the planet to try to get home?” Pemberton said. Along with the possibility of getting stuck overseas, there was also the risk of catching COVID-19.

Fortunately, his wife, Bryana, working for Alaska Airlines, they were able to tweak their flight plans.

“We hustled home as soon as we could,” he said. “We got home, and about five or seven days later, they closed San Francisco Airport.”

Home is Bend, where Pemberton and his family moved in 2017 from Half Moon Bay, California, where Pemberton ran an architectural metal fabrication shop in nearby San Carlos for about 15 years. It was a working studio and shop through which he did work for custom homes, made prototypes for inventors and entrepreneurs.

“A whole slew of things” led the family to move to Central Oregon, including family they’d occasionally visit in Bend, a town that reminded Pemberton and his wife of their respective hometowns in the Sierras.

“We just thought, ‘Wow, this reminds us of being little kids ourselves,’” Pemberton said. “There was just something familiar about that.”

But in 2020, there was the question of how to make ends meet once the pandemic arrived at home, in Bend, where Pemberton makes functional and decor art, custom furniture and more through his company, Design Deschutes, and collaborates with other artists in Central Oregon Metal Arts Guild.

“We were fortunate. The airline’s furloughs allowed for unemployment, so there was some income coming in, and we had some savings that we didn’t blow through on our vacation,” he said, laughing. “We made a real quick, concerted decision to be as frugal and conservative as we could because we just didn’t know.

“The catalyzing side of 2020, at least early on, was that there were a lot more art shows that were going online,” Pemberton said. He submitted to one such show, in Marin, his triptych “Angles of Repose,” which earned an honorable mention.

“That became this point of, ‘OK, the importance of art and artists working together, collaborating, finding their way through any channel possible, in this case the Internet, became the first real stepping stone going from making the damn piece to being awarded and recognized, to the piece selling, ultimately, later on,” Pemberton said.

CO CAREs grant money would help him in contributing to a collaborative piece with Kinsculpt, self-described as a motley crew of artists, makers, and enthusiasts,” working together on a large public sculpture titled “Fleur De Lux,” which, as planned, will eventually make its way to the Deschutes County Fair & Expo Center.

“If I can create work that the public can enjoy, with grant money, that satisfies my own ethics,” Pemberton said. “When I was going through my thought process of the grant, I thought, well, part of this I can use to fill in the gap of my savings, and my debt, essentially, I’ve accumulated over this last year and a half of being affected by sales. … If this works as a funding source to get that next bit of public art out there, then the idea is to really use that money to put a smile on people’s face.”

Watch Central Oregon Daily at 6:45 a.m. to see an interview with the featured artist.