A man slowly took shape beneath a pair of grinders. Italian sculptors Alessandro Lombardo and Andrea Ingrassi worked at the Carving Studio and Sculpture Center Friday on “Stone Legacy,” a statue of a stone worker commissioned by Mark Foley and Green Mountain Power, intended to be the first in a series of sculptures placed in downtown Rutland. Work is expected to continue through next week.

Speaking through interpreter Steve Shaheen, who is also supervising the project, Lombardo and Ingrassi said conditions at the Carving Studio were “optimal.”