The path I have followed as a sculptor and as an artist has been made simply by doing my work and seeking what I thought were necessary. There have been and continue to be needed challenges that allow myself and my work to grow. These challenges have placed me on a river, as I call it, flowing in and out of light and darkness, time and timelessness, life and death, and always forward. I continue working as if I just traveled the river this morning and look forward with enthusiam to each day. I have thought much and written much. Someday soon, I hope to have the humble courage to share it.
What I have done with sculpture and art is of this universe. I could not have done it without the assistance of the sun, the planets, and our Earth with its unlimited generosity and ageless mysteries. Often I ask myself - What is it? The wood carving and the stone? What is there, in there, that I am looking for? I cut, I shape, I polish and grind. Mountains and people with hands of steel come to mind. Long days with little water and hard crusty bread. What is there, in there? Below the crust, underneath that ancient bark? You want to climb a mountain and bring back five or ten tons of rock.
There is a 500 year old Sapele tree in Ghana that wants to talk to me. Why? It's not the rock, is it? And it's not the mountain or the ancient forest, is it? Is it that man you told me about, that blind man that made his own tools and carved stone he never saw? It was the Greeks and the Romans, wasn't it? Dante? Michelangelo? It's always Michelangelo with his bloody fingers and his lonely eyes. And he never had a mother did he? Or a father. Is there a mother and a father, real ones, deep inside those rocks?
And Dante, roaming, lost and found, his footprints everywhere, as if walking through crevices and portals. He could climb out of hell to climb a pure white mountain, create a language so beautiful, never to be fully understood.
Why the eyes and all those hands? Was it needed to take a mountain from Spain and another from Tennessee and bring it to New York City and Cleveland?
What was that all about?
You are still thinking? Not anymore? I know what you said about thinking. It's like school. A necessary evil. We have rocks and trees and a heart and a soul, so that we can learn something. I carve very deep. It's like looking for a meal. A piece of bread.
Sustenance. I mentioned many times that if you don't eat the stone, the stone will eat you. That once the stone takes you in, you can never come back. You don't live in this world. You just try to, like a bird in a cage. The bird? Yes. The one that wants to be free. Who is free with a legacy the size of Eden around your neck? When all things of this world seem frivolous and passing and you find that one thing that was made just for you, you want to be there, close enough to touch, every day, every night. You want to search the world, like Ishtar, find all the dismembered body parts and all the scattered and tattered feelings, put them all back together, one piece at a time, take them back to where they belong even if it takes a long, long time.
Art is time. First you have to grow your fingers, water them carefully, teach them to touch the four corners of the world, to hurt with a pain that you will know and understand, to work nonstop for two thousand days, to feed that precious heart that clings to you.
- Giancarlo Calicchia
