A new exhibit at FloridaRAMA will feature the work of British artist Lucy Sparrow. It’s a pop-up, interactive art emporium, called Lucy Sparrow’s Quick Shop, and it debuts Friday at that whimsical, walk-through gallery inside The Factory St. Pete.
Sparrow’s art needs to be seen to be believed. More to the point, it has to be felt.
Indeed, everything inside the Quick Shop – approximately 13,000 items, large and small – is actually made of felt.
For over a decade, the native of Bath, England has been on the cutting edge of fabric art.
FloridaRAMA staff has only offered clues as to what’ll be in there, saying only that it will include “Sparrow’s interpretation of a uniquely Florida ‘everything’ store.” And that it’s all for sale.
Sparrow designs every piece herself, and her five-member staff does the stuffing and stitching.
She was 4 years old when her mother taught her to sew, and bought her felt to make her own toys. “I was instantly obsessed with making replicas of objects,” Sparrow told an interviewer. “I knew from when I was tiny that I wanted to be an artist.”
She debut in 2014 with an exhibit called The Cornershop in London’s East End. All 4,000 items in the shop, all covered in stitched felt, were for sale with prices starting at £1 (about $2) for a lottery ticket, and Sparrow herself handling the cash register. “I couldn’t believe there were queues around the block,” she said. “I sold the shop 40 times over.”
In Soho, she created a felt “sex shop” called titled Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium (early in her career, Sparrow had briefly danced in a gentleman’s club, and Roxy was her stage name).
Then there was Lucy’s Delicatessen, at New York’s Rockefeller Center; and a fully-stocked pharmacy, The Bourdon Street Chemist, at a London Gallery.
In 2022, Sparrow created a pop-up market at Water Street Tampa. With 50,000 handmade felt replicas of real groceries, Tampa Fresh Foods included more than 50,000 items, from canned goods to loaves of Cuban bread. Her 3,000-square-foot pop-up became a viral sensation.
Between August and September of this year she operated The Bourdon Street Chippy in a Mayfair gallery. It was a felt reproduction of a classic English fish and chip shop, comprising more than 65,000 pieces, with virtually every detail, from battered cod and chunky chips to curry sauce, pickled eggs and fizzy drinks, entirely handmade from felt.
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parrow has “felt” her way through installations in Paris, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and even Bangkok. She created and hosted The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Lunch, at Buckingham Palace, in 2022.
“Her work thrives on the tension between nostalgia and absurdity,” writes Artlyst, “inviting viewers into a world where the ordinary becomes uncanny.”
Admission to Lucy Sparrow’s Quick Shop is free with paid admission to FloridaRAMA (find tickets and other information at this link).
Lucy Sparrow will be in attendance, at FloridaRAMA, Nov. 25, 26 and 28.
