Bronlynn’s first Stay at Home portrait was captured outside of her apartment building, the former YMCA located downtown. Her second and third portraits were captured just around the corner, at Lock 4 park, one of her frequented spots where she can be caught reading a book while enjoying a coffee from Akron Coffee Roasters.
For Bronlynn, the pandemic allowed her to spend time better understanding herself and realize what fuels her. She has taken time to discover how to find, and refine, her voice in the world. “I live my life by these three pillars: Never stop creating. Never stop learning. Continue to help others,” said Bronlynn.
In July of 2024, Bronlynn started a new job at the Cleveland Foundation. “I reached a point where something was off with my three pillars and I needed to separate my work self from my community self,” she said. “It was too intertwined and I was sacrificing my own mental health.
Taking the leap to the Cleveland Foundation gave me the opportunity to learn different skills. A community foundation operates very differently from a private foundation, and with that I’m learning an entirely different culture in a different city than the one that I grew up in. That has it’s positives, but it also has challenges. I feel a little bit more removed from Akron, which is kind of liberating in a way because I’ve been readjusting my relationship to this place in a way that's much more healthy. But it’s also sad because I don’t know what’s going on in my home to nearly the same extent.”
Bronlynn expressed that this change gave her the break she needed—helping her restore her mental heath, grow in personal relationships, and create art. “I was struggling to find my voice around my art and not feeling like an artist. Since then I've picked up pottery and printmaking. I had a big solo show in a gallery. Another show at a coffee shop that was showcasing my printmaking for the first time and then I did a entire show around my market haul photos.
In January of 2025, Bronlynn’s mother fell ill with pancreatic cancer. “It happened so rapidly. In February they said we had six months, and she passed away weeks later. It was the day before my birthday. Although it was a short period of time between the diagnosis and her passing, we did get to work through some of the complicated aspects of our relationship. But it’s hard to think that my mom will never see me get married, she will never see me get my PhD or finish a book. I'm now the owner of her home. She will never see what I've done to it [the home]. I thought I would never go back to this house and here I am returning to it and making it my own. She will never see all of these other things that I do with my life.
This experience of losing her has reshaped my life in a way that the pandemic did. I turned 30 at the start of the pandemic and discovered a whole other person beneath the surface. Now I'm 35, my mother has passed away, and I'm like “oh, there is a whole other world beneath, with more layers that I didn't know were there.” I have shifted jobs. I'm in a different relationship than the one I was in in 2020, I am about to move into the home that I grew up in, but also the first home that I own outright. It’s a weird place to be and I’m still in the midst of processing it all.”
