Poetry in Bronze
Susan Read Cronin’s sculpture The Top Rung seems to lean into the question, “What’s the next step?”
Written by Joan Tapper
SUSAN READ CRONIN’s sculptures are guaranteed to put a smile on your face. Visual puns, clever juxtapositions, playful takes on animals, plants, and body parts (noses!)—she directs the viewer’s attention with clever titles that hint at a narrative element. Cronin has cast more than 1,000 pieces since she started making bronze sculptures in 1996, when she and her husband were living in Vermont. A full-time resident of Montecito since 2016, she also works in cut-paper silhouettes and has published three volumes of poetry.
Most of her pieces recently have been relatively small, but Cronin is now experimenting with scale—for example, increasing the size of an initial piece, a 20-inch sculpture called The Top Rung to her own 5-foot-3-inch height. “It’s fun to figure out which pieces might translate” to a larger size, she notes. “And I want to experiment with what technology can do and still have a hand in it.” susanreadcronin.com
