Artist:
Forging violence, into repair & Imagination
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 unmaking and remaking—of relearning how to turn toward one another and sparking imagination to create a future with more justice and joy.
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Blacksmithing
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GUNS
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INTO
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GARDEN TOOLS
✳︎ Blacksmithing ✳︎ GUNS ✳︎ INTO ✳︎ GARDEN TOOLS
Formerly known as a shotgun barrel, these garden spade shovels have been opened up to dig a perfect hole for your seeds and seedlings to reside. 12" - 14" in length. About 3-4" in width with a custom handle made for each spade.
Each is handmade so colors vary.
Hand-carved along the shores of Lake Superior by Minnesota artist Diana Oestreich, this print is part of a limited. Each print is Titled, numbered and signed.
Every purchase directly supports Mutual Aid for Northland families impacted by ICE’s presence in our community.
This is art that refuses injustice. Art that stands with our neighbors. Art that turns care into action
Popular
Made for War. Forged for Peace by the hands of a combat veteran. Every act of violence can be unmade. Every story can be transformed. This adjustable cord necklace is made from the barrel of a gun to disarm hearts.
Duluth, MN
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“Oestreich’s work resists passive spectatorship.
It calls us into relationship—with the object, with its history, and with their own proximity to systems of violence.
transformation is not a metaphor but a demand: to participate in the slow, collective work of disarming and reimagining the better world that is possible.”
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