Amanda Love
From my perspective, the book is of vital importance in a culture that increasingly devalues the traditional codex as the primary mode of knowledge transfer, history recounting and where it is being removed from our schools and libraries on a historic level. I am illustrating this importance by applying reductive processes (i.e., dismantling) to reveal and remind viewers not only of the power of content and ideas, but also to elevate the craft inherent in its component parts.
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Selected Works
Biography
Amanda Love (B. 1974 Columbia, South Carolina) lives and works in Granville, Ohio (USA). Love is aninterdisciplinary artist with a background in bookbinding, typography, and book conservation. In two decades inChicago she collaborated with artist, photographers, designers, musicians on numerous creative projects, founded LoveLeaf Press, bookbinding, letterpress and design studio.
Love’s work is informed by current events related to book suppression. Her work ranges from small intimate works to large scale installations. Years ago, Love began using books as her primary medium. In addition to making books herself, she realized another act of creation could come from disassembling them. The process of creating in this manner was integral to the work of art itself: the intentional act of taking books apart, the repetition of ripping them, the sorting and categorizing parts. A visual language emerged in the process. Though the book may be nostalgic in and of itself, it often evokes memory and loss.
Today, Love is executing a large scale, outdoor installation (SILOS) at Grange Audubon Nature Center, ColumbusOH, and has multiple solo exhibitions currently at Springfield Art Museum, and in Chicago.
Artist Statement
As a former professional bookbinder, my art practice is inspired by the evolving role and meaning of the book and I am making connections from the past and current book events, both result in a loss. To illustrate that loss using a variety of interdisciplinary mediums. I have made and dismantled thousands of books and reorganized them in response to current book banning actions against under represented or suppressed voices/themes, assaults on fact-based journalism, retelling history and misrepresentation of truth, cultures that have been eradicated and knowledge lost as a result of human and natural actions.
From my perspective, the book is of vital importance in a culture that increasingly devalues the traditional codex asthe primary mode of knowledge transfer, history recounting and where it is being removed from our schools and libraries on a historic level. “The national number of book banning attempts in schools and libraries at the highestlevel historically speaks to the current assault on words. Words have power.” I am illustrating this importance byapplying reductive processes (i.e., dismantling) to reveal and remind viewers not only of the power of content and ideas, but also to elevate the craft inherent in its component parts. I view the book as the original icon to dispersefact and fiction by those in power. Historically, stones, walls, tablets, codexes were destroyed during power transfers, colonialism and divided communities. Books and the buildings that hold books (e.g., libraries, museum,religious centers, governmental spaces, homes) continue to be the target of suppression or destruction. As aresult, countless people and cultures have been deprived of their identity and heritage. The remnants of those words and ideas are becoming memories. The magnitude of the historical loss and the current attack on the freedom to read what one chooses to read informs my work.