| May. 17th, 2012

Portland Unloads Expensive Sculpture for $100

Of Public Interest

By Exception Staff | October 02, 2011

In 2005, the city of Portland commissioned a few expensive art projects across town and placed a big $135,000 bet on "Tracing the Fore," which was installed in the Old Port's Boothby Square on Fore Street between Pearl and Silver Streets in 2006.

Fast forward to today, and the widely panned artwork is finally gone, sold off for just $100 to a single private bidder.

Designed by artist Shauna Gillies-Smith of Boston, the original goal was to "integrate objects into public spaces with the goal of introducing a sense of artistic vitality, playfulness, spirit, delight, fantasy, joy or wonder into the daily lives of citizens."

Here is how the leaders of Maine's largest city described the project in its Planning and Development Department 2005 Annual Report:

Tracing the Fore is a holistic landscape design with rolling lawns that are intersected by stainless steel wave forms. Boothby Square is on Fore Street which once bordered the Fore River before development activities changed the waterline. Gillies-Smith notes that “Tracing the Fore intends to connect to a deep natural history of the site in harmony with the cultural and architectural history. It is also intended to be a place of pleasure, beauty, and delight.”

The image here was an artist's rendering of the project in its idealized state. In reality, citizens hated it and petitioned the city to get rid of it as soon as possible.

Are you glad this heap of metal is nothing but a memory now?