Valerie Wahna

Luminuous Flux
digital artwork created from scanned woodcuts layered with photography and hand drawing
40 x 40 in.

Valerie Wahna is an artist, designer, photographer, and maker who lives and works in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Originally from Ohio, she graduated from Kent State University with a BFA in printmaking. She taught briefly at Kent State and then spent her corporate career working in store design at multiple retailers. Her artwork has been shown in galleries in Ohio and Michigan, and her retail work has been executed in the US, UK, Australia, and Malaysia. Much of her recent work has been focused on woodcuts and collages inspired by animals, travels, and pure imagination; but she doesn’t limit herself to any one medium.

This work is part of a larger series focused on mass feminine empowerment. The repeated image of an amazon warrior is used to create interacting patterns representing the influence generated by a unified multitude. No matter the individual circumstances, generations of women have needed to call upon each of the female archetypes to survive and thrive in various phases of their lives…maiden, mother, protector, destroyer. All of these can be found in the recurring warriors, amplified in mass to generate the tipping point when the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

© Valerie Wahna