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British artist Lucy Sparrow makes her West Coast debut this week with a nearly 2,800-square-foot supermarket in which everything is made completely of the crafting fabric beloved by kindergarten teachers and camp counselors. The installation, which is staged inside the Standard, Downtown L.A. and runs August 1 to 31, is fully shoppable. Browse 31,000 plush pieces, including jars of Vlassic Pickles, cans of Chef Boyardee, and boxes of Nerds and Red Hots, then make your way to checkout, where even the conveyor belt is cast in fuzzy fabric. “From the fridges to the shelves – absolutely everything is made of felt”, says Sparrow. In addition to groceries, Sparrow Mart will have a meat counter, a sushi bar (where shoppers can place individual pieces of sushi into a box and grab chopsticks, wasabi and soy sauce – all made of felt, of course), plus a 1980s video rental section with cloth copies of Short Circuit and Dirty Dancing, among other throwback titles. Though Sparrow did research in a number of modern-day American grocery stores, her L.A. installation is meant to channel a fictional supermarket in the 1980s. “Sparrow Mart represents the first age of the hypermarket, where everything was available and plentiful and almost in hypercolor”, she says. As for whether or not Angelenos are ready for a full-fledged British felt invasion, Sparrow laughs. “This city has crazy stuff happen all the time,” she says. “If anyone’s ready for a felt supermarket, it’s definitely L.A.”. Here: British artist Lucy Sparrow, poses with U.S. and U.K. flags in her art installation supermarket in which everything is made of felt, in Los Angeles, California on July 31, 2018. (Photo by Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
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