about.

Artist | Biologist| Feminist 

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STATEMENT: ​​

I am increasingly interested in the moment when living beings become objects of reverence—often only after they have become rare. What does it mean to make a living being sacred, and why does that recognition arrive so late?

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My work moves through ceramics, sculpture, installation, video, and natural materials to explore how humans assign value to the living world. Drawing from wildlife biology, environmental science, and material culture, I build quiet environments that linger in questions of attention, neglect, and care.

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Animals and ecological forms appear in my work not as symbols, but as presences that reflect back human systems of perception and bias. Nests, relics, and endangered species recur as fragile markers of what is noticed and what is ignored.

 

Rather than illustrating environmental crisis, I am interested in slowing perception—creating spaces where looking becomes sustained rather than fleeting. In these spaces, wonder is not decorative; it is a form of attention that asks something of us. Scientific reference and material language meet in ways that allow grief, beauty, and responsibility to exist without resolution.

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Ultimately, my practice asks not only what we have lost, but why we waited to revere it until it was disappearing. In doing so, it examines what our acts of reverence reveal about our systems of value.

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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 [x2], 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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