about.

Artist | Biologist| Feminist 

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STATEMENT: ​​

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My practice examines the relationship between wildlife health, environmental instability, and human systems of consumption. Working across ceramics, fiber, sculpture, and installation, I explore how ecosystems change under human pressure. This includes habitat loss, agricultural land conversion, climate disruption, and urban expansion. I am also interested in how species decline reflects a broader cultural and spiritual disconnection from the natural world.

 

With a background in Wildlife and Ecosystems Health, I approach art-making as a form of ecological listening. Animals in the work act as both subjects and witnesses, reflecting adaptation, fragility, and imbalance. Drawn to the quiet intelligence of nature, its shelter, interdependence, and survival, I create symbolic and emotional encounters that invite empathy and reflection without turning the work into scientific illustration.

 

Material contrast plays an important role in the work. Earth-based materials such as clay, jute, burlap, and fiber connect the sculptures to land, labor, and ancestral forms of making, while industrial materials and salvaged debris reference ecological disruption and displacement. Across mediums, I create sculptural environments that encourage viewers to reconsider their relationship to the living world and the systems that shape it.

 

BIOGRAPHY

Born: Clearfield, PA​

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Diane Arrieta is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice bridges environmental science, cultural memory, and feminist materiality. Born in Clearfield, Pennsylvania and raised in Oil City—former site of a Seneca Indian village and later, the birthplace of the U.S. petroleum industry—her early life shaped a lasting awareness of the tension between ancestral land and industrial disruption. These layered histories continue to inform her work, which explores the delicate relationships between nature, resilience, and transformation.

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Of Lenape ancestry (not an enrolled member of a federally recognized tribe) and Czechoslovakian agrarian European descent, Arrieta draws from inherited perspectives on land stewardship and ecological interconnectedness. Her tactile installations often incorporate clay, fiber, and found materials, merging traditional craft with contemporary sculptural forms.

Arrieta holds a BFA in ceramic sculpture and an MSc in Wildlife Health from the University of Edinburgh. Her work examines the impact of human behavior on species decline and biodiversity loss, while also advocating for the well-being of women and children—especially in the face of environmental crisis.

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Her work has been shown widely across the United States and the United Kingdom, with recent solo and group exhibitions at the Cornell Museum, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Tallahassee, Palm Beach State College and the Art & Culture Center of Hollywood. She has received numerous accolades, including the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, the Hector Ubertalli Award for the Visual Arts and the Helen M Salzberg Visiting Artist Fellowship. She is the founding director of the International Humanities Project Curatorial Lab and has held leadership roles in academic exhibition programming and public art initiatives.

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Education:​

MSc   Wildlife Health University of Edinburgh

         College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine                               

         United Kingdom

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BFA    Ceramic Sculpture Florida Atlantic University

          Boca Raton, FL 

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