By Brett A. Mejia ’13
THE ROUNDUP
Entering the second story of the Eller building, students are greeted by a showcase of different artworks that are displayed on the newly installed TV and inside the glass cases.
One of the teachers responsible for these students’ work is art teacher Mrs. Debbie Cronin.
Mrs. Cronin has taught at Brophy for 14 years and is currently teaching five classes along with teaching the Loyola Scholars after school and an art class for faculty on Wednesday evenings.
Mrs. Cronin is also the current moderator of the National Arts Honors Society and teaches 2D Drawing, Advanced 2D Drawing, Printmaking and AP Studio Art.
When asked where she gets her inspiration to continue teaching and practicing her own art, Mrs. Cronin credited students.
“A lot of times it’s the works of students and kind of researching things for students and so then I will become interested in something that I stumble upon while I am looking for stuff for students,” she said.
When not teaching her diverse collection of art classes, Mrs. Cronin can be found reading biographies and researching the study of genealogy in her free time. Her favorite types of art includes hyper-realistic art and photorealism.
A little known fact about Mrs. Cronin is that she was the Most Valuable Player of her high school basketball team.
One of Mrs. Cronin’s best memories at Brophy comes from when English teacher the Rev. John Becker, S.J. taught here.
“My best memory at Brophy is doing the spiritual exercises with Fr. Becker,” Mrs. Cronin said. “He was really insightful about St. Ignatius, how to pray and I just really enjoyed that and I found that to be a very rewarding experience.”
With the many types of materials and mediums that the Brophy Art Department has supplied for students, it allows them to explore new and old mediums and art styles.
“She lets us work with whatever mediums we would like and she doesn’t rush us and she gives us an ample amount of time to complete our work,” said Alexis Guevara ’14, a student of Mrs. Cronin’s 2D Advanced Drawing class. “She is very nice and she’s awesome.”
In her 2D Drawing class, Mrs. Cronin teaches the basic fundamentals about drawings, caricatures, perspective and many more types of works by providing examples of her own to students.
“I like drawing and we get to experiment with different methods of drawing and I feel like I can express my emotions onto the paper during the whole hour,” said 2D Drawing student Sahil Kapur ’14. “She knows her stuff and we do a lot of cool things, different things, it’s not like the same thing over and over again, it’s very different every day.”
Students of Mrs. Cronin’s AP Studio Art are required to produce at least 12 art pieces per semester to add to their portfolio to submit to AP graders.
“She’s really lenient on time management and she just lets you take responsibility of the workload,” said AP Studio Art student Joe Hickey ’14. “You can tell that she has been here for a while because she is really laid back and she’s just a good teacher in general and she’ll give you help if you actually need it.”
