Amanda Love Spotlight
Amanda Love
Written by Nor Osborne , September 2025
Amanda Love tears, rips, and dismantles books. In each work of art she creates, she makes books come unbound, telling a story with each page, cover, and piece of thread. She emphasizes words as well as the lack thereof, transforming recycled and specific collections of books into sculpture.
Her work doesn’t just honor the physicality of books. It confronts their erasure. Amanda’s work is inspired by book banning and suppression, both historically and currently.
“There's no shortage of that right now, books are under attack pretty regularly,” she says. “
This happens in times of war or regime changes, kind of like what we're having right now, locally and all over the world. Historically speaking this is when institutions are wrecked and books are destroyed. But it can happen in more insidious ways like public school board book bans. People don't want certain books to be read, certain authors to be published, or marginalized people's voices to be heard.”
She expresses these concepts by dismantling and transforming books. Ripping pages from the spines, Amanda dismantles books, dipping pages in concrete or setting them on fire. She then reconfigures the wreckage into something new. Her final product calls attention to the disastrous impact of censorship.
“The loss of intellectual freedom - to not be able to read what you want to read, to not be able write what you want to write - is shocking to me.”
Born in South Carolina and educated near Washington, D.C., Amanda traces her artistic instincts back to childhood.
“I’ve been ripping paper my whole life,” she laughs, remembering a huge project she created in high school, which was eerily similar to what she does now.
“The subject matter was different, but the process is the same.”
Amanda’s interest in the subject matter began to fully form during her time in grad school. After finishing her bachelor of fine arts degree in design at East Carolina University, Amanda felt that she needed to shift her focus, “there was something else out there.”
She began looking into the interdisciplinary arts at a graduate level, and she ended up at Columbia College in Chicago, studying book binding, letterpress, printing and paper making. She stayed in Chicago for the next 20 years, she was the proprietor of Love Leaf Press for 14 years: a bookbinding and letterpress studio, creating one of a kind books. This endeavor nurtured Amanda’s love for books and the opportunity to create books with a wide range of traditional and alternative materials laid the groundwork for the art she would later create.
Moving to Granville marked a turning point in the focus of Amanda’s work.
“Before I was making books for people that were all commissioned, providing a service for someone. Now I’m working full time, completely focused on my own stories and messages.”
While Amanda doesn’t exhibit her work in Licking County, most of her artistic process occurs here.
“I cut myself off from the world when I’m here, fully diving into my work. Besides venturing out to support other Ohio artists and creatives, I am happy in my studio, fully committing myself to creating.”