In response to our request for nominations of the Worst Public Art in New England, critic Edgar Beem writes:
“I would nominate ‘Tracing the Fore’ by Shauna Gillies-Smith [sketch above], a landscape art installation that may have been a good idea but turned out badly. It takes the form of a wave undulation of grass in the middle of Boothby Square in Portland, Maine. The metal retainers are a public hazard and the grass has never grown in, making ‘Tracing the Fore’ the artistic equivalent of a vacant lot.“I’m also not impressed with the Venezuelan artist Jaime Gili’s paintings on the oil storage tanks in South Portland [pictured below], a project much ballyhooed by the Maine Center for Creativity. I didn’t think Gili’s design was the best submitted and it already looks tired, static, and uninteresting.”
Update:
Mr. Beem has been so kind as to send along the photos below to support his nomination of Shauna Gillies-Smith’s “Tracing the Fore.”
The Portland Press Herald reported on July 27, 2011, that Tracing the Fore had been sold to PWM Land, the only bidder for the installation, for $100. Portland bought it six years ago for $135,000.