Cronin herself is tall and well-muscled, with a fresh, open face and a smile made for toothpaste ads. Veins stand out on her arms. In her garage studio one day last summer, she was, as she put it, "trying to make hair." She frequently took steps backward, eyeing the goddess critically. What would happen if she chiseled too much in one place, like when you cut your own hair and end up with a much shorter cut than you'd planned?

"When I make a mistake, I have to rethink the proportions," she said, chipping a hand-sized piece of stone. "You're only supposed to take off what you don't need."

She starts every sculpture at the point where the concealed body would be closest to the stone -- say, a shoulder, or even a nose. If she were trying to find in her stone a ballerina doing a plie, she would start with the cocked knee. The stone helps her decide where to go next.

"Even if I have a drawing, sometimes I change it to go where the stone goes. Sometimes, the stone chips off in an interesting way, and I like it."

Different stone yields in different ways, and there is no best kind, she says. Alabaster is gorgeous and fun to work, but not good for outdoor work. Marble is much harder and requires sharper chisels than limestone. Travertine, a kind of marble used in old courthouses, has cavities and breaks off in big chunks. It also reveals fossilization, "which is cool, but it's hard to work. Even the dust is chunky."

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Cronin was working on a private job in Munhall in the fall of 1998 when the bricklayers' union solicited her for union jobs at higher pay. But the higher pay topped out without a separate rate for stone carving; stone carving is not a union category. Increasingly inclined toward the artistry of stone carving, Cronin recently began working solely on commissions. She is working enough, as she puts it, to "make quota."

"I'm beginning to feel more like an artist because people like what I do."

Cronin has completed a $10,000 project at a home near Chatham College, where she carved an entire fountain and reliefs of topiary trees into stone columns on each side of the grand entranceway. For the goddess, she received $2,400. When she's working on larger pieces, she gives an estimate for the job. Her set rate is $50 an hour.

It's not that it's hard to find stone carvers. Just ask one for some names. Cronin will give you the four or five names she knows, and those four or five will give you some of the same ones.

"I think stone carvers are a largely extinct breed in the United States," said Will Carpenter of Carpenter Construction in Greensburg. He worked with Cronin on a home in Squirrel Hill. "It was really a great experience working with Heather, especially when you didn't even know she was out there.

Joe Gigante, owner of the Parma Cut Stone Co., near Cleveland, says he knows of only four stone carvers in the country, including Cronin. One indication of the small circle is that New Castle stone carver Ranier Devido has worked with two of the men Cronin met on the scaffold that day at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.

"I don't think there are many carvers," says Devido. "Lots of guys do cutting. And it depends on what you consider to be carving. A lot of individuals do stone work, a lot for their own enjoyment." Carvers, he said, are people who can duplicate something that is intricate, the same way every time.

Devido's employs two stone carvers. They produce machine-quality items by hand, all calipered and measured for exact replication.
Cronin prefers one-of-a-kind production. She works nearly every day in her garage workshop along the sidewalk below her house. Some days, she visits clients. She prepares with research, sketches and clay models.

She has carved house numbers for private residences, family crests, a bird as a memorial stone and reliefs of vines and lattice around a fireplace. For the home where she carved reliefs of topiary trees into stone columns, each tree took three weeks.

Often, she lost track of time, neither hearing nor noticing people around her: "You hear about people being like that," she said, her voice full of wonder that it had happened to her.

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Much of the old architecture in the United States was ornamented by Old World immigrants who were working for wages their clients could afford. In today's parlance, that would mean they were underpaid. As one example, Carpenter cited the beautiful stone work high up on the Arrott Building, 401 Wood St. at Fourth Avenue, Downtown. "I was in someone's office once and was looking at it through the window. As a contractor in the modern era, I could not imagine having someone carving stone gargoyles 23 stories in the air."

Carpenter said watching Cronin work "was amazing. It's one in 1,000 who has that kind of ability in their hands." On the job in which they worked together, he said, "Once the designer knew he had this option, he was like a kid with a new toy. He wanted to use it everywhere."

Carpenter said the labor-intensiveness of the craft has made it nearly obsolete, and most blueprints do not call for stone anymore. "You're spending on a decorative element that, for a long time, there was no demand for. Now with the economy so good, people are looking for more options or other means of expressing artistic vision."

Though stone work is not as unaffordable as people may think, he said, the combination of its cost and its obscurity keeps most architects from investigating the possibility of calling for stone carving. Oddly enough, stone carvers think the same way about the likelihood of work. Joseph Alonso, the mason foreman at the National Cathedral in Washington, says that only a few of the dozen or so young carvers who apprenticed at the cathedral in the mid-'80s are still carving: "There is not enough work out there to keep them going."

With help from three master carvers, they made the gargoyles and grotesques on the cathedral's west tower. The cathedral now has just one carver on staff, a master carver who is in ill health, he said. The apprentice program has not continued, and there is no current trend or movement to indicate that stone carving and sculpting are on the brink of a resurgence.

In Cleveland, Joe Gigante has a dream of establishing stone carving as a craft vocation in the public schools. He says he wants to establish a school and apprenticeships that would work in conjunction with the Cleveland-area school systems and the Cleveland Institute of Art. "A lot of kids are frustrated in school because they are bored with academics," he said. "Getting into stone sculpting could redirect their energy."

The plan is still in the talking stage, as Gigante looks for grant sources. He met Cronin while working on curbs and a driveway at a home where she was doing stone work. He contacted her about his dream of teaching stone carving to children. Cronin says she would like "to be part of a movement" resurrecting the art and craft of stone carving.

"When I work with the garage door open, people stop to ask what I do in here all day. "One woman said, 'Can I bring my kids down here?' which thrilled me, because I'd love to show kids what I do. I'd love to show them something that takes time."

— Diana Nelson Jones

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