Shaker Dining Table and Chairs c. 1937

Lon Cronk rendered this Shaker dining table and chairs with watercolor and graphite. I wonder what it was like for him, alone in the studio conjuring this image with graphite lines that look so precise, so architectural, alongside the lovely muted warmth of the watercolors. Look at the confident brown washes of the tabletop meeting the pale ground of the paper—a tender, quiet meeting. This makes me think of Agnes Martin’s grids, too, and how her work embodies a similar sense of restraint and order. Even though this is a rendering of furniture and not a pure abstraction, it's not a stretch to imagine Cronk as a fellow traveler of hers. The freehand sketches surrounding the furniture, with their technical annotations, offer another, more intimate glimpse into Cronk's practice. It's like he's inviting us into his thought process, allowing us to witness the emergence of form from concept. This act of translating something functional into something beautiful, back and forth, feels alive. It keeps the conversation going.