FREDERICTON – Halifax tattoo artist and sculptor Gordon Sparks will spend the next few weeks learning traditional First Nations art from master aboriginal sculptor Ned Bear in Fredericton.
Sparks says he is learning more than a new art form, he’s learning about himself.
“It does feel like it was meant to be. It feels like the spirits guided the whole thing together.”
Sparks was recently awarded an $11,000 grant through Arts Nova Scotia to study alongside his mentor in Fredericton.
“I refer to my masks as pawakan. I am a Plains Cree. My dad is from out west and pawakan is a spirit guide a spirit helper,” he said.
Bear says it’s an art form that he developed more than 30 years ago and it’s believed in aboriginal culture that these spirit helpers guide humans through rough times.
“When people don a mask they transform and it sort of helps them heal.”
Sparks says working with Bear has been healing for him. He grew up on the Pabineau First Nations reserve, near Bathurst. He left when he was a teenager.
“When I ended up in Moncton homeless and struggling with drugs and alcohol my life was pretty chaotic at that point.”
It’s written all over his face, which is covered in tattoos. Sparks says he spent years living life behind a protective mask of his own making.
“I sat down in the mirror and tattooed myself with a couple of bottles of wine crying about my own feelings.”
But after a chance encounter about six years ago with Bear, Sparks says his life started to change. He was inspired to pursue a career in the arts and eventually ended up in Halifax where he opened a tattoo studio and became well known for his snow sculptures.
But he says this is the first time he has sculpted something with wood. Learning the craft from Bear has not only expanded his artistic skills, Sparks says it’s been enlightening.
“Bear pointed out to me, you wear a permanent mask and I didn’t really realize that until he told it to me. It originally began as that – it began as a cage.”
But he says his facial tattoos are a gift, a reflection of his inner spirit that others can see beyond if they choose, much just like the pawakan masks he’s learning to sculpt.
“When you put it on that’s how you feel that you help people. Like, my mask has helped me helped guide my spirit to where I am today.”
Sparks will spend the next two weeks working with Bear and hopes to return to Halifax to carry on the “spirit mask” making tradition in his province.
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