Lefton Esplanade Art

Title: “Athleta”
Artist: Giancarlo Calicchia
Medium: Granite boulders
Completion Date: July 27, 2010

Sculpture Mile along the Lefton Esplanade

Kent, Ohio 44242-0001

“Athleta,”, a tribute to the ideal of “man and his search for excellence,” and part of Giancarlo Calicchia’s series “The Witnesses”, is a carved granite boulder surrounded by other granite pieces that are located along the Lefton Esplanade between Terrace Drive and Kent Hall. “’Athleta’ and its surrounding figures are involved in an emerging narrative which reveals their legacy as the preeminent witnesses of life’s evolution,” Calicchia proposed. Stones used in this piece were all created from boulders left behind after the glaciers retreated. Calicchia excavated the granite monoliths, some as deep as 12 feet, from his vineyard and surrounding farm in Lake County’s Madison Township area.

About this Artist: Cleveland sculptor Giancarlo Calicchia was born in Italy and was formally trained in sculpture at Syracuse University, the University of Rome, the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, and the Academy of Fine Arts in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. He has produced more than 2,000 works of art during his sculpting and painting career. He has been working with wood and stone sculptures for more than 10 years.