Since public art in Portland has suffered its share of controversies in recent years (i.e. "American Baseball Family Group" and "Tracing the Fore"), I felt it was time I get better acquainted with the city's collection. For no particular reason (other than I happened to walk by it the other day), I begin my exploration with "Michael," by John Raimondi. This abstract piece, installed in 1974, sits in a grassy strip where Free Street meets Temple Street and is fabricated out of COR-TEN steel.

Raimondi first attended art school in Portland (at the forerunner to the Maine College of Art) where professor Norman Therrien got him interested in sculpture. Since then, he's gone on to create public art for numerous cities, corporations and museums in the US and Europe.

According to Raimondi's website, his initial works created in the '70s are examples of geometric minimialism, of which "Michael" is a perfect example. As his career progressed, he moved into environmental abstractions, then figurative abstraction, followed by his jazz series and finally his Native American Indian series (in which he is currently working).