Highland Park is a vibrant, close-knit neighborhood where people of varied backgrounds and lives come to make their homes.

re: Pete  is an artwork inspired by the strong connections that Highland Park residents share. This spirit of connection is perhaps nowhere more joyfully embodied than by Pete, an itinerant peacock who made Highland Park his home roaming the neighborhood making unexpected appearances. Sightings of him, posted online and shared by residents, transcended age, politics, and the day-to-day matters of life.

re: Pete celebrates color, pattern, and connection by reinterpreting elements of a peacock into a work of interactive art that provides a focal point for Tatum Park, the neighborhood’s central outdoor gathering place. Located at the intersection of the park’s main axes, the sculpture symbolically embraces the neighborhood's name in bronze with a concrete bench and footing for colorful metal pipes that rise fourteen feet in the air. Alternating inwards and outwards, these pipes, or "feathers", simultaneously suggest an intimate space to stand within and expansive space to move out toward. Mirrored surfaces adorning the inside and outside of the sculpture create reflections of the park and the viewer.  A central, double-sided convex mirror, or “eye”, can be tilted by users to reflect and distort the sculpture and surroundings. This project is generously supported by the Benwood Foundation.