About Me: Cherie Lester Mixed Media Arts

Cherie Lester is a longtime artist and creative maker with a background in marketing and visual arts. She started her artistic journey in 1990 at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Missoula, Montana, followed by a move to Atlanta, Georgia to attend and graduate from Southeastern Center for the Arts. Cherie continued her artistic studies, branching out to mixed media painting, collage, and assemblage while studying at the Corcoran School of Art + Design from 2005-2008.

Cherie is a teaching artist on the faculty of Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, bringing arts education and opportunity to children in underserved communities of the District of Columbia. Previous teaching experience includes Photography Instructor at Southeastern Center for the Arts, visiting artist program demo at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and featured visiting artist at the Smithsonian American Art Museum for a workshop titled ‘Smithsonian Museum: Beyond the Studio with Cherie Lester’. Cherie has also taught numerous workshops at local events and creative spaces in DC, including Shop Made in DC, the Anacostia River Festival, Crafty Bastards, Wunder Garten Crafts Pop-Up, Crafts and Craft Beer at CHAW, and several others.

In 2018, the Phillips Collection Museum store invited Cherie to become a featured local artist during their ‘Made in DC’ exhibition, displaying and selling her original abstract artwork in the museum store. This partnership - and experiment in offering original 2D art in a museum store - proved so successful that it continued for months after the exhibition ended. The ‘Made in DC’ exhibition included giving a gallery talk to the public about abstract influences and being a DC artist.

Cherie has been featured in Design Milk, Apartment Therapy, Digital Artist Magazine (feature, October 2008), Shutterbug Magazine (feature), and Columbia Magazine (cover). She has sold her work in DC for many years and has participated in art shows along the East Coast and beyond. Cherie’s work hangs in many places in DC including the Washington Hilton, Texas Instruments, and the Wilson Building (via DC Arts and Humanities local grant).

Cherie was born in Wilmington and raised in Newark, Delaware. She has lived in Washington D.C.’s Woodley Park neighborhood since 1994 and spends most weekends in Lewes, DE.