Opening Reception: QUOTIDIANA Rituals & Passages By Francie Hester

Susan Eley Fine Art is delighted to present an exhibition of new artworks by Francie Hester entitled QUOTIDIANA: Rituals & Passages. This body of work was conceptualized in preparation for her 2024 summer residency at The Shed in Monte San Martino, Italy. Following the two-month residency as their inaugural artist, Hester continued production back home. In her studio in Kensington, MD, she fulfilled her vision, shaped by the sights and sounds of this picturesque Italian village, in the context of her primary practice and in her familiar surroundings.

In QUOTIDIANA, SEFA debuts Hester’s newest series, “Passeggiata” and “Tempo,” inspired by the daily routines and rituals that marked her 54 days in this small, hilltop town of 800 people. Her daily morning walk to town for a coffee, observing the cycle of sunrise and sunset and regular visits to see the 15th-century Crivelli altarpieces, marked time for the artist. The “Settimana” series, foundational to the entire project, consists of eight weeks of daily paintings.

One painting leads to the next with overlapping visual elements, shapes and colors, connecting moment to moment and day to day. The series, framed by week, is an outgrowth of Hester’s “Daily Drawings” series in which the artist produces liberated and colorful abstractions, whose vitality is structured within her iterative timeline of consistent creation. In addition to the newest series, QUOTIDIANA also includes the artist’s signature series of “Vessels,” “Convex” and “Strips,” familiar to Hester’s viewers. The Gallery is pleased to welcome the public to attend an exhibition opening with the artist present on Saturday, June 14th from 4-6PM.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Francie Hester works in sculpted aluminum, steel and plexiglass, exploring the interplay between structure, memory and time. Her process-based practice builds vibrant layers of pigment—dripped, gridded and fragmented—then deconstructed through sanding, scraping and cutting to reveal textured, luminous surfaces. Her work often evokes liminal spaces: between light and shadow, silence and sound, permanence and decay.

In recent work, Hester’s material vocabulary has expanded to include handmade tesserae—multi-layered painted fragments formed from pumice stone—and cut textile forms dyed with coffee grounds collected during her residency in Italy. These materials, both durable and ephemeral, deepen her ongoing exploration of ritual, place and the passage of time. The integration of mosaic and textile forms continues her investigation into how surfaces can hold memory, carry history and evoke the sacred within the everyday.

Hester’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including shows in Jordan, Mongolia, Ireland and Costa Rica, with solo exhibitions at Susan Eley Fine Art (New York and Hudson, NY), Anton Gallery (Washington, DC), Green Chalk Contemporary and the Hawthorne Mansion (Monterey, CA). Major commissions include projects for Memorial Sloan Kettering (NYC), Airbus U.S. Headquarters and an 18-foot installation at the Chicago Kent College of Law. Her work is held in numerous corporate and private collections, including the World Bank, Capital One, Covington & Burling and the International Monetary Fund.

She has received grants from the District of Columbia, the Maryland State Arts Council and the Arts Council of Montgomery County. Hester earned her MFA in painting from the University of Maryland, College Park and her BFA from the University of Michigan. She maintains studios in Kensington, MD and Boulder, CO. She is represented by Susan Eley Fine Art and has exhibited in the Gallery’s multiple New York locations, and various art fairs, since their first partnership in 2012.

ARTIST STATEMENT BY FRANCIE HESTER ON “QUOTIDIANA”
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” — Annie Dillard

This body of work began in a small hilltop village in Italy, where I spent 54 days as artist-in-residence at The Shed in Monte San Martino. Each day, I created one painting—ritualized acts of layering, composing and reassembling pigment and form. These daily paintings became a visual record of time, place and passage. What began as an open-ended gesture grew into a rhythm of mark-making rooted in presence, reflection and connection.
The exhibition QUOTIDIANA: Rituals and Passages honors those days and the unfolding of a practice shaped by material exploration of the Crivelli altarpieces I encountered in the village.

My process draws from medieval devotional forms, mosaics and architecture. Pigment, wax, aluminum and other materials are layered, scraped and reconfigured—mirroring the layered nature of memory, the erosion and recovery of time, and the idea that we live in the space “in between.”

In the newer works, fragments echoing mosaics are embedded into the surface. These tesserae—handmade, multi-layered painted tiles formed from pumice stone—act as markers, steppingstones across imagined landscapes. Mosaics speak to both permanence and impermanence: a tradition of durable materials telling ephemeral stories. Their integration into my practice reflects a growing interest in how varied materials—textile, metal, pigment and stone—can be stitched together to create a unified language of place, ritual and continuity.

Several pieces include cut textile forms dyed with coffee grounds sourced from the village. Their patina—drawn from the familiar ritual of daily coffee—anchors the paintings in the intimacy
of everyday life.

This exhibition weaves together daily devotion and expansive reflection. The tactile process of building and breaking down surfaces has become a metaphor for time itself—structured and
fluid, ordered and undone, remembered and remade.