5138 McQuade Road | Duluth, Minnesota
Diane Oesterich, Host Artist
Diana Oestreich is an author, artist, and veteran working at the intersection of violence and transformation. Her practice moves between community storytelling and the forge—most notably through the Duluth Peace Hero Awards and the physical dismantling of guns, which she cuts apart and reforges into garden tools and sculptural forms. These works are not symbolic gestures; they are material interventions. Weapons once designed to harm are remade by hand into objects that sustain life. Rooted in lived experience, her work centers people-powered acts of repair—where justice is practiced, and joy persists alongside grief. Fire, force, and labor are not erased but redirected. The forge becomes a site of reckoning and possibility. Oestreich’s work asks what it means to disarm violence not only in our hands, but in our stories, our systems, and ourselves. It invites participation in the ongoing work of remaking—of turning toward one another, and shaping a more just and livable world
Some images are cropped. Click on each photo to see the entire artwork. All images copyrighted & may not be reproduced without permission.
September 25, 26, & 27 