Amelia Volwiler-Stanley (AVS) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her creative path began in her grandmother’s sewing room at age 15, where she first developed a deep connection to garment-making. After years of working across sculpture, installation, printmaking, digital fabrication, and cyanotype photography, she has returned to fashion—bringing with her a richly layered visual language shaped by conceptual inquiry and material experimentation.

Volwiler-Stanley holds a BFA from Hope College and an MFA from Indiana University Bloomington, where she concentrated in Sculpture, Installation, and Printmaking. Her cyanotype work emerged post-graduation as a light-responsive method for translating woodblock imagery onto fabric. Early on, she began using reclaimed natural fiber garments as the substrate for these works—giving discarded clothing new life through light, image, and process. This material practice led to the founding of PsyanoForest LLC, a studio dedicated to transforming waste textiles into wearable, treasurable objects. While cyanotype was the starting point, Volwiler-Stanley now works with reclaimed materials in a wide range of processes, including garment construction, laser-cutting, and digitally fabricated sculptural systems.

Her work explores themes of trauma, grief, and the psychological forces that lie beneath the surface of lived experience. Using natural motifs—ribcages, butterfly wings, spider webs, bones, and birds—she creates sculptural works that act as talismans, emotional vessels, and contemplative spaces.

Her current practice spans cyanotype, computer-aided design and fabrication, and experimental fashion, with a focus on transforming discarded materials into wearable art. She is the founder of PsyanoForest LLC, and serves as Senior Designer and Project Manager for artist Eames Demetrios on the global narrative project Kcymaerxthaere.

She has been awarded fellowships from Ox-Bow School of Art (LeRoy Neiman Fellowship), Indiana University, Scuola Internazionale di Grafica (Venice), and the Vermont Studio Center.