Pete Fecteau used over 4,000 Rubik’s Cubes to create this mosaic of Dr. Martin Luther King. Apparently Rubik’s based artwork is a “thing.” There’s Rubik’s Einstein, Lincoln, Sitting Bull, Kathy Lee. There’s even a name for the genre: Rubikcubism. Pete was born on April 9th, 1983 on Williams Air Force Base in Arizona to Janice and Paul Fecteau. As an “Air Force Brat” Pete and his family moved around the U.S. pretty frequently. His mother and her twin sister Janet Banister are both talented artist and the artistic vein showed early in Pete’s childhood. He had a traumatic childhood and used art as a way to express his emotions and as a way to escape.
Pete attended Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire from August 2001 – May 2002 where he was enrolled in the Graphic Design program. He then transferred to Kendall College of Art & Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan and graduated in 2007 with a BFA in Digital Media Design.
Pete was hired as an interaction design out of college and continues to work in that field today. In 2006 Pete realized that he needed to reconnect with his talents in fine art and began painting abstract works using spray paint and contemporary techniques involving gravity, time and temperature.
Pete has a history as a graffiti artist and after college was searching for a way to utilize his passion for street arts in a legal means. Pete has performed live paintings for a number of events, has created murals from commission and competed in the world largest art competition, ArtPrize, where he placed in the top 50 out of over 1,700 artists. His work “Dream Big” is featured here and was a turning point in his artistic career.
Pete now seeks to create metaphors based on his observations. He finds gaps in thinking and fills them with visual ideas. “Dream Big” combined the need for creative thinking in public schools with lessons of history while using a bleeding edge medium, the Rubik’s Cube. Make sure to look through the rest of the site to see some of Pete’s other metaphors at the link bellow the video.