About

Cynthia Alberto is Filipina,  an artist, weaver, weaving activist,  teacher, and founder/director of the Brooklyn-based weaving studio, Weaving Hand.  Her personal work as a fiber artist bridges traditional and contemporary weaving: drawing inspiration from ancient communities of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Cynthia honors the artisanal process of weaving while using unconventional materials to create expressions of form, structure, and function, often addressing themes such as femininity, age, and beauty as it relates to our culture today.  

Inspired by her studio practice and teaching, Cynthia continuously explores diverse relationships between weaving, healing, inclusive art, craft, and sustainability.  In 2014 at Weaving Hand, Cynthia developed "Weaving Together":  a series of ongoing collaborative weaving events that focus on healing the community and create interpersonal relationships through the act of weaving together. Members of different communities are invited to bring recycled materials to weave alongside their neighbors. "Weaving Together" events were held at Pioneer Works, Queens Museum, Ace Hotel, and Bldg 92 ­Brooklyn Navy Yard. 

Cynthia is also a recipient of the Dan River Weaving Award (1998);  Peters Valley Craft Center Art Educator Scholarship (2008); The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2009); and Museum of Arts and Design - Open Studio Artist Residency (2009). and  Ace Hotel Artist in Residence (2015 - 2016).  Since 2009, Cynthia has been  a Resident Artist at League Artists Natural Design; a studio and gallery in Brooklyn, NY that features work by adult artists living with disabilities.  

Cynthia was featured in the Cooper Hewitt Design Dictionary (2014), where she demonstrated the process of weaving for the museum's website.  She has conducted lectures and workshops at the Queens Museum of Art (NY), Tyler School of Art, Pratt Institute, Fashion Institute of Technology, Brooklyn Fashion and Design Accelerator (BFDA), Sheridan College  Textiles Dept, and Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts and Culture.  Cynthia is a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology with a BFA in Textile Surface Design and exhibits her work worldwide.