Ptarmigan existed as a project space in Vallila from 2009-2011 and a mobile curatorial/creative platform until 2014. We no longer exist as an organised collective, but this website will continue to serve as an archive of the activities produced as/at Ptarmigan during these years.
Amanda Vähämäki was born in 1981 in Tampere, Finland. After high school she moved to Italy to study painting in the Fine Arts Academy of Bologna. Very soon she discovered the vivid comic scene of Bologna. She also understood painting was not her cup of tea. In 2004 she began self-publishing her comics and became a member of Canicola, a comic art collective of young artists in the Bologna area. She has also published short stories in various European anthologies, such as Canicola, Orang and Glömp. Her first graphic novel, Campo di Babà, was published by Canicola in 2006. It was then translated into French, Swedish, Finnish and also Serbian. In 2006 Vähämäki and her colleague Michelangelo Setola held an exhibition collecting over 200 drawings in Hamburg. Some of these drawings were self-published in a little book called Souvlaki Circus, re-edited and reprinted in 2008 by Buenaventurapress.
After graduating, she moved back to Finland. Vähämäki was asked to draw a story for the Drawn & Quarterly Showcase number 5. Once it finally was ready in 2008, it was published also in Finnish in a separate edition by Huuda Huuda, under the name Äitienpäivä, (Mother's Day). Now it exists also in French, published by Fremok. Vähämäki currently resides in Helsinki and works as a full-time comic artist with eleven other artists at the only comic art studio of Finland, Kutikuti. Together they publish a free comic tabloid magazine called Kuti.