Keeping It Together
Keeping It Together invites viewers to slow down, explore, and discover beauty through interaction. Built from handmade
papers, tKeeping It Together invites viewers to slow down, explore, and discover beauty through interaction. Built from
handmade papers, translucent layers, stitched elements, and carefully engineered windows, the book transforms with every
page turn. Openings align and shift, textures overlap, and fragments of color and form continually reorganize into new visual
relationships.
Inspired by the process of gathering, preserving, and balancing life's scattered pieces, the work celebrates both structure and
spontaneity. The restrained palette of natural handmade papers, warm earth tones, and luminous marbled surfaces creates a
quiet visual rhythm, while pockets, inserts, and hidden components encourage curiosity and tactile engagement. Every
movement reveals another composition, making the reader an active participant in the work rather than a passive observer.
Neither narrative nor sculpture alone, Keeping It Together exists somewhere between architecture, collage, and book. It rewards
repeated viewing, offering a different experience each time it is handled—a meditation on order, discovery, and the simple
pleasure of making.ranslucent layers, stitched elements, and carefully engineered windows, the book transforms with every
page turn. Openings align and shift, textures overlap, and fragments of color and form continually reorganize into new visual
relationships.
“The artist books of Lore Spivey, especially the book, Keeping It Together, have the quality of artworks made by an artist for her
own delight. There is no sense of any ponderous effort to be impressive, yet these small works communicate technical skill,
playfulness, and artistic maturity. It is one thing to make a fine pictorial composition and another to make an interactive object
that generates a different beautiful composition with every turn of its varied, perforated pages. While there is variety, there is no
chaos. Rather, the materials, colors and textures present a limited palette with which the artist amuses her own astute eye. The
cumulative effect is a stroll through a cleverly designed building where each turn of a corner generates another pleasing aspect.
- Felicia Van Bork
Artist Statement
Keeping It Together grew from my fascination with the ways people hold themselves together through ordinary acts of care,
persistence, and adaptation. We rarely move through life as complete or finished beings. Instead, we mend, rearrange, preserve,
and begin again, carrying traces of every experience with us.
As I worked, I became interested in the quiet tension between strength and vulnerability. Paper, despite its apparent fragility, can
endure remarkable transformation. It can be folded without breaking, stitched after tearing, layered until it gains unexpected
strength, and altered without losing its identity. Those qualities mirror the resilience I see in people.
Rather than offering a single conclusion, I wanted to create an object that reflects the ongoing nature of becoming. Every
decision we make leaves a mark, every relationship adds another layer, and every challenge asks us to find a new balance.
The process is never truly finished; it is one of continual adjustment and renewal.
For me, book arts provide a language uniquely suited to these ideas. The act of constructing a book is itself an act of gathering
disparate elements into a unified whole. Through that process, I explore the belief that beauty does not come from perfection,
but from the evidence of care, intention, and the willingness to continue despite uncertainty.
Year: 2024
Medium: Mixed media artist's book
Structure: codex
Materials: Archival papers, mixed media
Dimensions: closed 8.5” x 6” x .1”
Edition: Unique
Status: Available
