Chrystal Sparrow

Chrystal Sparrow (born 1983) is a traditional and contemporary Musqueam Coast Salish artist living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Biography Sparrow comes from a family of Coast Salish artists, weavers, and carvers. She is a visual artist and a third-generation carver, having been traditionally mentored by her late father, master carver Irving Sparrow. She is also a fourth-generation fisherwoman.

Art Practice Sparrow sees Coast Salish art as a language, learned through "designing, and experimenting in new mediums." She is currently looking to abstraction, beadwork, and colour elements that draw from her Cree and Shuswap heritage. With a focus on building community and healing, she also used the space to invite elders and women from the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre (where she has worked as a cultural programmer) to create art and share a meal together.

Sparrow's most recent work, Indigenous Matriarchs, was presented on a billboard at Arbutus St. and West 12th Avenue as part of Platforms: We Are Here, Live, a series of twenty-three public art projects commissioning xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) artists. Indigenous Matriarchs is a multimedia work honouring Sparrow's "Coast Salish and Cree matriarchal lineage." Other works by Sparrow include a house post for In the Presence of Ancestors, a project curated by Coast Salish artist Tasha Faye Evans, which will see five posts raised in ceremony along Port Moody's Shoreline trail by June 21, 2023. In 2017, Sparrow carved a 7' by 3' red cedar panel commissioned by Starbucks Canada, #150plus wishes, in collaboration with the Broadway Youth Center, and in 2016, she completed a 7' by 3' red cedar panel for the City Council Chambers at Vancouver City Hall.

Sparrow began a diploma program in Expressive Art Therapy at the Vancouver School of Healing Arts in 2018, and is currently pursuing her M.A. in Expressive Arts Therapy at the European Graduate School in Switzerland. Her younger brother, Christopher Sparrow, is also a carver.