The Process

The Details

Detailed Photography by Jennifer Smutek

Chronos (also Cronus) was both a Titian and the father of the Greek Pantheon; most notably of Zeus, king of the Greek Gods. Chronos grew to fear his offspring and chose to consume them. Zeus, through an act of trickery by his mother, was spared. Once grown, Zeus waged war on his father and, eventually, Chronos was slain.

The Gods of the Greek Pantheon and nearly all pantheons represent various archetypes and pathways of attainment within Humanity and diverse aspects of Creation as a whole. However, Chronos classically represents the grand element of Time itself.

Time is the great Universal force of Entropy, the skeletal decay of perpetual change that always reclaims the time that all borrow in order to exist in the first place. Just as Chronos sought to swallow his children whole before they rightfully challenged him, so does Time always seek to break down, challenge, and decay the very essence of Life and Progress.

Growing up in Baltimore, I witnessed and came to admire the resilience and love of our community against the major forces of past slavery, segregation, modern addiction, and violence; our own entropic forces. We clean up the Bay, we work together as a community to hold one another accountable as we lift eachother up, and we fit together in odd but beautiful ways to make up the complex societal machinery of Maryland.

It is this very same complexity, history, and inner-connectivity that inspired Chronos, a symbol of our resilience against Time itself and the twin culture of Love and Grit that Baltimore encompasses so well.

It is with great pride that I dedicate Chronos, The Baltimore Crab, to our great city.