Welcome to a world of felt! This past weekend I had the honor of checking out the new installation by Lucy Sparrow, a London-based artist who works almost exclusively in felt by creating soft versions of existing objects. For her first big break in Los Angeles, Lucy has made an entire supermarket fully stocked with over 31,000 products all made by hand and signed by her! You will literally find everything in this market. Don’t believe me? See the images below:

I first read about this artist in 2015 when she exhibited Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium. Although details about this installation and the products that it housed would be considered NSFW (Not Safe For Work) for LAAFA, the simple idea of an artist creating products entirely out of felt was so peculiar that I instantly fell in love with her work.

All the products in this installation are available to buy and range from $15 to $200 and up (like, $50,000 and up). In a recent interview that Lucy did with The Cut, she mentions why she chose felt. “I decided to work with felt because I find that it’s a medium that is so synonymous with being a child. It’s an easy fabric to work with, it doesn’t fray, it’s available in all the colors you could possibly think of. So, I thought, I wonder if I could make an entire shop that if you’re daydreaming, it looks similar enough that you could go there thinking it was real.”

And so she did. Having the chance to experience this supermarket in person brought out the child inside of me. I was suddenly transported back to the days when I would pretend to shop with plastic groceries and be a cashier with fake money and a register that ding’ed just like the real thing. It was an interactive world come to life and now my perspective of supermarkets will never be the same.

Sparrow Mart is located on the second floor of The Standard hotel at 550 S. Flower St. in Downtown, and runs August 1, 2018 to August 31, 2018. The installation is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. It is closed on Mondays.

 

 

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