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Art At Home LIVE | Christopher and Chrystal Sparrow
Tue Jan 11, 2022 | 4 PM
Vancouver Art Gallery
Courtesy of Chrystal Sparrow
Tuesday, January 11 | 4 PM
For her instruction work WATER EVENT (1971/2021), Yoko Ono invites artists to create, or find, a container that can hold water. For the iteration at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Ono requested to work with local Indigenous artists to reflect the significance of water to these local communities, past and present, and to acknowledge and amplify the Indigenous communities on whose land the Gallery is located.
In this edition of Art At Home live, WATER EVENT participants Christopher and Chrystal Sparrow, carvers from the Musqueam First Nation, will tell us more about how they created their collaborative sculpture Mother Earth and the Salish Sea (Humpback Whale) (2021) for the exhibition GROWING FREEDOM. They will also share their relationship with water and the importance of stewardship. Learn how you too can create artwork at home that expresses your feelings about the waters that surround us!
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Born into the Musqueam First Nation, Chris Sparrow grew up on a boat, fishing with his late grandfather, Lyle Sparrow. Chris went up and down the coast every fishing season, prawning, hunting and learning the traditional values of our Salish seas. With the guidance of his father, Irvin Sparrow, he finished his first carving at the age of nine. His carving was also influenced by master carvers like Wayne Young. Chris’ visions and inspiration come from things he has seen on his fishing trips. Chris now works with many mediums and loves the challenge of new ideas and projects.
Chrystal Sparrow is a Musqueam Coast Salish artist who lives in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She comes from a long line of Coast Salish artists, weavers and carvers. Her late father, Irving Sparrow, was a master carver that passed down the tradition to Chrystal and her brother, Christopher. Sparrow works in mediums of red and yellow cedar, metal, leather and acrylics, and has completed commissions for the Vancouver School Board (2018), Starbucks Canada and the Broadway Youth Centre (2017) and the City of Vancouver (2016). In 2018, she also became the first Coast Salish artist to work in the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh (MST) Cultural Residency in Stanley Park.