British artist Lucy Sparrow has stitched and felted immersive bodegas and vegetable stands from London to Bangkok over the past decade. You know what she has yet to sew together? A U.S. museum show. That changes next summer, when Sparrow unveils “The Beginning of Convenience” at the Crystal Bridges Museum’s contemporary art hub, the Momentary.
“The Beginning of Convenience” will elaborate on Sparrow’s established practice of recreating environments entirely in felt. Here, she’s revisiting the American supermarket. The concept recalls Sparrow’s buzzy SparrowMart store, erected seven years ago in Los Angeles. This time, the subject matter nods to Crystal Bridges, owned and operated by the family that founded Walmart.
About 20,000 hand-sewn plush wares will fill this supermarket’s shelves. Earlier projects like Cornershop (2014) and 8 ‘Till Late (2017) were comparatively small, offering 4,000 and 9,000 felt products respectively. Over the years, Sparrow’s team and output have expanded significantly. This summer’s Bourdon Street Chippy offered 65,000 objects.
Lucy Sparrow’s The Bourdon St Chippy (2025) at Lyndsey Ingram, London. Photo: Alun Callender for Jo Brooks PR Ltd.
Beyond thread and felt, “The Beginning of Convenience” will utilize another medium Sparrow’s known to deftly wield—nostalgia. This supermarket will teleport guests back to the 1980s and ’90s, a time when “changing roles within the household led to the development and proliferation of quick and easy consumer goods, such as microwave dinners, frozen foods, and out-of-the-box meals,” the Momentary explained. This is also the era where Walmart grew from a small, local retailer to an international powerhouse.
Recreating these decades required research—the likes of which Sparrow has undertaken for previous projects, like (2023). This time, she’s studied Walmart’s archives, curating her new supermarket’s semi-vintage products, which will span cosmetics, household goods, and, of course, groceries.
Lucy Sparrow. Photo by Alun Callender
“There are lots of new products, and many of the ones I’ve made before have had a re-design to represent their 1980/90 branding,” Sparrow noted over email. “Products with intricate shapes and labels are always more challenging to sew and paint—Lucky Charms cereal is always a very labour intensive work because of the many layers of painting.”
Typically, Sparrow’s installations dwindle with time, as the creations she’s so painstakingly stitched together get snatched up. 8 ‘Till Late famously closed early, after its shelves went bare. “The Beginning of Convenience,” though, will look the same from start to finish. Nothing will be for sale.
The free, non-ticketed exhibition will feature two more rooms. One will recreate Sparrow’s studio, the Felt Cave, situated in an old Suffolk ambulance station. Another will screen a documentary that Sparrow made while producing the show.
Some of the sweets slated for Sugar Rush. Courtesy of Lucy Sparrow
Too excited to wait? Sparrow’s hitting the U.S. next week to debut a candy shop titled Sugar Rush at Art Miami with TW Fine Art. This 35,000-work store will feature “every candy bar you can think of,” Sparrow said, plus a pick-and-mix bulk candy section, and a wide range of framed works. It’s a far cry from her health-conscious vegetable stand at Scope Art Show last Miami Art Week, but a fitting conclusion to this year, where Sparrow came clean about her struggles with disordered eating.
“I’m a little obsessed with sweets,” she said. “We have so many packets of candy backstage in an installation—it really is the fuel that Team Felt runs on.”
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
