2024 Dreamstarter Creative: Janelle Cronin

Janelle Cronin (Navajo Nation), 31, is a multimedia artist that has skills in embroidery, traditional weaving, acrylic painting and creative writing. She started as a traditional rug weaver, and since 2017 she has pursued other mediums and has recently began combing them in multimedia work. Her pieces have been selected, displayed and commissioned by many Native American organizations, and has a permanent display in the Cultural Center on campus at Purdue University where she is a pursuing a PhD. She is a contributing author to an upcoming publication on the survival of Indigenous knowledges and how art can act as a collective memory.

Cronin’s dream is to show the interconnectedness of culture, craft, and family tradition through the creation of new cultural heirlooms. She will depict the four generations of women in her family through four separate but interconnected multimedia works on canvas. She will be incorporating traditional elements, paired with contemporary techniques and modern styles. These paintings will be accompanied by the writing she is doing on art as a collective memory, and act as a visual representation of oral histories her family has passed down.