Reaction to the top five picks to decorate oil tanks in South Portland are as colorful and animated as the designs themselves.

A board of artists and art experts unveiled last week the five finalists for Maine’s largest and most costly public art project.

Finalists range from lightning bolts of blue, orange and steel gray to wavy bands that wrap the tanks to abstract photos of famous people that come in and out of focus depending on the vantage point. The ultra-modern art has caused some South Portland residents to scratch their heads.

City Councilor Tom Blake, who attended the public unveiling of the proposals on Aug. 12, admits his art tastes differ from the finalists that emerged.

“While I found two to three interesting, not one of the five finalists really struck home with me,” he said. “There was too much abstract art, and personally I am not an admirer of abstract art. I was expecting more along the lines of Maine-related history, mountains, seascapes and native animals.”

Resident Michael Rumo was blunt in his assessment. He said the $1.2 million public art project “is just too expensive, and I don’t care where the money comes from. The whole thing is stupid.”

Maine Center for Creativity’s plan to paint 16 Sprague Energy Corp. oil tanks also has become a popular online target for vitriolic criticism, much of it anonymous. People posting comments on local Internet forums, such as the South Portlander news site, complain about everything from the quality of the design finalists to the politics of painting oil tanks.

Resident Calvin Muse, one of the few posters to use his true identity, railed about American oil corporations and over-consumption by the public. In several posts, Muse complained that the art project was an attempt to gild an environmental and political crisis over oil.

“We have this horrible little contest whose result will just be another diversion from the insidious reality of what the fossil fuel industry has done to us,” he wrote.

But organizer Jean Maginnis offers a different view of the project. She said the mammoth art work will call international attention to Maine’s creative economy. She has the support of Gov. John Baldacci, the state economic office and the Maine College of Art.

Next month, the winning design will be announced by the Maine Center for Creativity, the nonprofit she directs. Maginnis hopes to raise enough private donations to install the project by 2011. A private company will use industrial-strength paint to apply the design to the tops and sides of oil tanks.

“The tank farm serves as a gateway to Maine and, for many visitors arriving by land, sea and air, it’s one of the first impressions they get of the state,” Maginnis has said.

The project will require 4,500 gallons of industrial-strength paint and cover 260,000 square feet of surface. The tanks run along the perimeter of Sprague’s tank farm. They are located next to the Veterans Memorial Bridge, off Interstate 295 and off the Lincoln Street extension.

The idea to paint oil tanks that thousands of motorists and plane passengers will see has spawned press coverage that extends far beyond Maine. But whether locals will get behind the project remains to be seen.

South Portland artist MJ Benson said “there is little to be excited about” in the designs. “This is not something I will rush to tell my friends to come and see,” said Benson, a photographer who was not among the 560 artists worldwide who submitted proposals.

“I’m just surprised these five are the best entries, considering that this was an international competition,” she said.

Walter Loeman, the chef-owner of Fresh! restaurant on Ocean Street, took one look at the five artists’ renderings and quipped, “Why don’t they just paint the oil tanks to look like cakes? Then we could stick giant wicks in the oil, light them and see which politician can blow out the candles first.”

Joking aside, Loeman said the project irritates him because of the costs. He said the money – although privately raised – could be better spent. He said he objects to spending a large sum to decorate oil tanks when people can’t afford to pay their oil bills.

Even the support some residents express for the oil tank art project is tempered and bland as the large, white oil tanks that dot the waterfront.

“Some (of the designs) are horrendous. Others, I could live with,” said Sue DiPietro Green, who co-owns DiPietro’s market on Cottage Road.

“Having something there is better than nothing,” added DiPietro Green, as she prepared take-out Italian sandwiches at the market’s deli counter.

Likewise, Lori Geiger, who commutes from Dresden to South Portland, said the “designs are better than just white tanks or seeing the petroleum company logos… If you have a large white object like this, you might as well decorate it,” she said.

One of the few ardent supporters is local artist Zoo Cain, known for the kaleidoscopic colors he spatters on hubcaps, his home and even the vintage Cadillac he drives through town.

“Painting the oil tanks is a real treat for the city,” said Cain, who submitted a design proposal that was passed over by judges. Yet he remains enthusiastic, saying the art project should be expanded to include more than 16 oil tanks.

“These oil tanks cry out for this,” he said.

Although art projects often elicit emotional and mixed public reactions, the proposal for South Portland may face more skepticism than usual, because the city has little experience in installing public art projects. The metal Liberty Ship memorial at Bug Light Park is the rare art display in this commercially developed city.

Tom Simpson, who owns True Value Hardware in the Mill Creek Plaza, said he can live with any of the designs, as long as they are not taxpayer-funded or “objectionable.”

“Everyone has a different opinion about art,” Simpson said, adding that the proposal reminds him of the lighthouse installations in greater Portland. In that project, artists and businesses decorated small replicas of lighthouses that were temporarily placed in public areas.

City Council candidate Tom Coward, an attorney and real estate agent, also weighed in on the debate, advising fellow residents in an online forum to settle down.

“What sticks in my craw is that people who volunteer their time and money to make even a small improvement in our community get attacked by some blogger who doesn’t feel the need to get off his duff to do something himself,” he wrote.

But even Coward seemed to offer only feint praise for Maine’s largest public art project.

“Not that these proposals will rank up there with da Vinci,” he wrote, “but give us a break on the negativism, folks.”