By Nancy Resnitzky

Jared Sark, former UPEI business and philosophy student, says he’s living the good life now that he is a tattooist and that it’s very possible he’ll be a tattooist for the rest of his life.
“My parents (Jim and Carolyn Sark of Rocky Point) have always been supportive of what I’m doing as long as I’m happy at it and I’m making a living. That’s the good life from what I can tell — making a living at what you’re happy doing.”
To make sure the good life continues Sark regularly attends exercise classes with his girlfriend, Martha Gaudet. The classes are taught by his sister-in-law, Rita Sark. She has convinced him that stretching the back muscles and lifting weights for the wrists and arms will help him to be physically fit for his job.
Sark works at Infinite Expressions, a tattoo business that employs three tattooists and one body piercer on a full-time basis. The tastefully decorated shop is located at 106 Hillsborough, just off Grafton, in a building that is kitty-corner to Holland College. Inside there are computers where people can browse through designs, and there is a full line of body jewelry.
Each employee has a comfortable office for privacy with and an area where the instruments are cleaned in an ultrasonic machine and then sterilized in a high-heat, high-intensity chamber called an autoclave.
Sark’s office walls are partially covered with drawings —his and two of the late Norman “Sailor Jerry” Collins’ who is known to many as the father of the traditional tattoo.
Sark prefers the traditional tattoo because it lasts a lifetime, has solid outlines, heavy black shading, bold colours and open skin. He gravitates toward pinups, ships and eagles but says the shop is open to traditional, tribal, Japanese and custom design ideas.
Sark uses tattoo machines that he makes himself. He’s sold over 50 of them to places like England, Missouri, New York, Arkansas and New Zealand, as well as across Canada.
Before Sark can begin the tattoo, he needs to know where to place it, how big it will be, if it will be black and gray or involve colour, and so forth.
“Sometimes customers will come in with a painting that doesn’t necessarily make a good tattoo simply because the surface is different,” Sark explains. “The ink is just sitting under your skin. As time goes on, little details move, so you want to plan for that ahead of time.”
He says that on occasion a client will pass out, not from the pain, but from nerves as it all becomes just too much for them to handle.
“When people pass out, they actually shake quite a bit so you need to make sure they don’t fall out of the chair and you want to be sure their blood sugars stabilize. This happened to me last week and once the guy calmed down, he was able to stay still for an hour and a half.”
Sark admits it’s normal to have some pain but the pain doesn’t appear to be significant enough to keep customers from walking through the door. The shop has a great reputation and people keep returning. The majority of clients are students and there are always cruise ship drop-ins from England, Australia, South Africa and elsewhere.
He has worked on 15 small ones in a day or one all day, and says the shop has done as many as 150 tattoos in a week.
When asked what he likes most about the job, he will say it’s the people. One time an Italian couple came in who didn’t speak English. With an online English/Italian dictionary for interpreting and a lot of pointing and some drawing, an understanding evolved and lettering was completed. The actual inking took 10 minutes but with the interpretation, it ended up being more like half an hour. Another time a retired, 77-year-old, volunteer firefighter came in for a little fire helmet tattoo. That was right out of the blue and a very pleasant surprise for Sark.
“People get tattoos for all kinds of reasons,” he said.
He says his work speaks for itself and he invites those interested to speak with community members he has tattooed including Donald Levi, Josh Jadis, Joe Gould, Cheyenne Kedy, Jonathan Jadis and Darcy Sock. He says he hasn’t yet tattooed a Chief but he has tattooed his sisters Jenene and Mary-Catherine.
Sark is willing to travel to Lennox Island and to Scotchfort for a day at a time and set up a portable tattooing shop if there is enough interest. He would like to pay homage to the great tattooists before him.
“I’m basically living it on and making sure it doesn’t die out.”
Sark can be reached at 902/370-4465 (Infinite Expressions) or at jared_sark@hotmail.com.