Arts Alive! podcast: Artist Lucy Sparrow

Artist Lucy Sparrow, whose unique installations in London art galleries (and elsewhere) have made her something of a worldwide celebrity, is our guest today on the Arts Alive! podcast.

Sparrow was in St. Petersburg putting together Lucy Sparrow’s Quick Shop, an installation-slash-exhibition at FloridaRAMA, St. Petersburg’s walk-through art experience. It’s a place where sensory overload is encouraged, and everything there is just a meter or two over the top.

Perfect for Sparrow, whose whimsical FloridaRAMA entry is a bodega, a small grocery store, in which each and every item – and there are 13,000 of them – is hand-stitched and lovingly covered in felt.

(Every package of soap, every box of chocolates or crackers, every milk bottle and every potato is like a little life-sized pillow, covered in felt and appropriately decorated. Everything is for sale, too.)

During our interview, Sparrow explains her process, and her illustrious history as a worldwide felt artist, and gets specific about her most famous installations, from a tea party at Buckingham Palace, a “felt Imaginarium” in Beijing, a McDonald’s in Miami and her current London exhibition, a to-scale Fish & Chips restaurant.

In fact, the only question she never gets around to answering is “Why?”

Because she’s an artist, and that’s really all the answer anybody needs.

Click on the arrow to listen to the conversation.