Toni Hartill Art: P is for ... PCANZ Collaborative Bestiary Book

Sunday, 30 October 2022

P is for ... PCANZ Collaborative Bestiary Book

"P is for Pupurangi", linocut by Toni Hartill

P is for...

Pupurangi!

"P is for Pupurangi", linocut by Toni Hartill

These are New Zealand's endangered northern giant land snails,

the New Zealand kauri snail,

also known by it's scientific name

Paryphanta spp.

of which there are two species:

Paryphanta Busbyi

up to 79 mm shell diameter

Paryphanta watti

up to 62 cm shell diameter

To learn more about these beautiful critters visit the DOC website HERE.

(...and also known by friends as

SNAILY!)

"P is for Pupurangi"

Edition of 30

Hand pulled linocut prints.

This edition of prints was created for the

PCANZ collaborative bestiary book project.

Participating members across Aotearoa New Zealand were organised into 4 groups, including an international group who collaborated with printmakers in Wales.

I'm in the Auckland group, which also includes a couple of people
from further afield to make up numbers.

The Rules

Everyone was assigned their letter randomly and we were invited to create a design of a real or imaginary creature or animal relating to our letter.

The letter had to be part of the design.

Printing could be edge to edge or with a border.

Perhaps not surprisingly I was pretty keen on including SNAILY in some form so I was searching which letters could also include him eg. Escargot, Gastrapod, Mollusc... There were a few options!

(If you've followed my work for a while, you'll know of my affinity to snails.)

Everyone has now completed their edition of 30 prints and they have been collated into complete alphabet sets, ready to be returned to participants while master copies have been returned to the organisers to be bound into books for the PCANZ archive and future exhibitions.

An Auckland workshop is planned shortly to share ways of either binding the prints into a book or creating a box to hold the prints.

At present I'm experimenting and researching possibilities and will report back on progress on the next stage of this collaborative project and to share ALL of the pages from the book.