Liberty Feature
EASEL ON STRIBLING
How the U.S. Naval Academy shaped an artist
by Courtney Stringfellow
S
he had just been processed out of the Navy when Hurricane Irma flooded her growing family’s home in Arlington. Months later, crammed in one upstairs bedroom with her husband and daughter, she realized she couldn’t run from it anymore: Kristin Cronic was meant to be an artist. “When the panic attacks started waking me up at night, I started to paint again, and that was when I realized this has kind of been enough. I need to do this,” Cronic said. “And so I painted an entire body of work during that time, with everyone living upstairs, and doing my job, being a new mom, and pregnant, because it was making me happy.” Cronic immersed herself in art throughout her childhood. Being an only child, painting was a solitary activity she could appreciate. Her aunt was an artist who also had a day job, and her life served as a realistic example of the level of freedom Cronic could expect as a future artist. Cronic carried that love with her through high school, taking every art class Episcopal School of Jacksonville offered. It is in those halls that she met who would become another influential figure: Vietnam Marine Veteran Richard Chamblin. “I remember that being a pretty pivotal moment, because I could see that he also did other things with his life and was an artist. And so it really empowered me to pursue all of the dreams I had, which was not just art, even though that was a huge part of who I was,” Cronic recalled. Growing up in Florida, she automatically considered attending the University of Florida, Florida State University and other schools in the region, but none of them captured her attention. She remembered a middle school trip to the Chesapeake Bay area from years prior, which is when she first noticed the United States Naval Academy (USNA). One of her school counselors recommended she seriously consider applying. “And then I went up for a recruiting trip for swimming, and I fell in love. I loved the structure, I loved the fact that it was just like really great education, and I wanted the adventure and the opportunity to lead. And just everything
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that it offered, I was really drawn to,” Cronic said. “So I was looking at other art schools at the time, but, honestly, once you get accepted to something like that, ‘No’ is not an answer.” Cronic chose USNA over art school, knowing she could always develop those skills later in life, but she didn’t leave her passion for art behind. She kept a sketchbook during Plebe Summer—the rigorous two month training program incoming freshmen (aka plebes) must endure on their journeys to becoming midshipmen. In the weeks that she prepared for this next chapter of her life, she discovered Pete Souza, the photojournalist who would later become the chief official White House photographer for former President Barack Obama. “Back then, I found [Souza’s] photographs of Plebe Summer in a book, and they were so raw and so honest, and this was before social media, so it was really the only thing I had to mentally prepare. I had no military in my family, and I really didn’t know what to expect,” Cronic said. “I was able to look at something that was the art of somebody else, and it really helped me prepare. And so I kind of made this promise to myself that one day I would tell the story the way I would, which is through painting.” Throughout those next four years, 2007-2011, Cronic would take mental notes of her experiences at the academy—such as replacing the dixie cup cover at the top of the greased Herndon Monument—and reproduce them on paper when she could. Long days stood between Cronic and her sketchbook, but she found her break during her third year in the form of a forgotten studio on campus. “You had to walk up this spiral staircase and this turret, and it was at the top of this tower, and I had to track down the keys; no one had been in it for years. So I got to open it up, and we had a little art club, and a girl from out in town came and taught us,” Cronic said. She and a group of four or five others would meet once or twice every week or so to learn new art skills and take a break from their everyday lives as midshipmen. It wasn’t much, but it kept the fire burning until graduation. Then in 2011, two weeks after Cronic was commissioned into the Navy, she married her best friend: Caleb Cronic. Then came the hard work. “Being new on a ship is just this firehose, and it’s intense, and my husband was my very best friend. We met the very first day of Plebe Summer, and
