Cynthia Weiss is an award-winning public artist, painter, and arts educator. She received her MFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Cynthia directs large-scale public art projects that invite community participation in the design and creation of the work. Her public work in the Chicago area can be seen at: Gateway Park in Navy Pier, the Chicago Children's Museum, the Rudy Lozano Public Library, Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, Oakton Community College, North Shore Congregation Israel, and various Chicago Public Schools.

Cynthia is a long-time member of the Chicago Public Art Group. In 1980, Cynthia and fellow CPAG artist, Miriam Socoloff, pioneered the use of mosaics as a community public art medium in the piece, Fabric of Our Lives for the Horwich Jewish Community Center. She has collaborated with many CPAG artists and mentored a new generation of young artists in the craft of community mosaics.

Cynthia has received many awards including: the City of Chicago Artist International Award to visit mosaic studios in Ravenna and Splimibergo, Italy, a City of Chicago Percent for Art Award with Hector Duarte, the Illinois Alliance for Arts Education's Teaching Artist Recognition Award, and numerous Artist Residencies to the Ragdale Foundation and the School of the Art Institute's Ox-Bow Summer Program.

Cynthia is the Schools Partnerships Program Manager for Columbia College Chicago Office of Community Arts Partnerships (OCAP). She directs the Arts Integration Mentorship Project that brings together Columbia College teaching artists with Chicago Public School teachers to integrate Literacy and Arts Practice in the classroom. She was the Director of Professional Development at the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, CAPE.

Cynthia is co-editor with Gail Burnaford and Arnold Aprill of the CAPE book Renaissance in the Classroom; Arts Integration and Meaningful Learning. She is also on the Advisory Board to the Teaching Artist Journal, both published by Lawrence Erlbaum.

She has exhibited her paintings throughout Chicago, including the South Shore Cultural Center, Beacon Street Gallery, Illinois Art Gallery, and Chicago Arts Source, and has worked as a Teaching Artist for Chicago arts organizations including Gallery 37 and the Illinois Arts Council.

Cynthia Weiss Artist Statement

I have always defined myself as both an artist and an educator throughout my art career. This dual identity has allowed me to cross professional boundaries in rich and inspiring ways. The lessons I have learned in creating large-scale community based work have served me well in my studio practice and in my teaching experience.

I approach my work as a designer, thinking about how the parts of each project can fit into a larger and integrated whole. The parts may be the individual members of a team who work together to create a collaborative project, the teachers and artists who come together to co-create curriculum, or a new series of my studio paintings organized around a chosen theme. I seek out the complexity and dialogue between the parts to find a synthesis of forms and ideas. In each project, I look for the underlying patterns and big ideas that can give meaning and direction to the work.

This applies to both the content and the forms of my work. The framing devices I use in my studio paintings are informed by public work and vice versa. Like many other CPAG artists, I have developed a design process and work with design structures that can depict complex narratives. I often use multiple frames to tell the many-faceted stories found in community histories, as well as personal experience. The collage-like format also grows out of my mosaic practice, working with individual tile pieces and mosaic fragments. I love to see the parts come together in a newly imagined whole.

Chic-Chac, 1989, Venetian glass mosaic, Chicago Percent for Art Award at the Rudy Lozano Library, by Cynthia Weiss and Hector Duarte


Journeys and Refuge Bench and Garden at Waters Elementary School, 1999, mosaics, paving stones, and concrete sculpture, by and Phil Schuster. Sponsored by Chicago Public Art Group and Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE).


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