Lucy Sparrow, Sparrow Mart (installation view), 2018. (Photo: Courtesy of @sewyoursoul)
British artist Lucy Sparrow has built entire shops out of felt for more than a decade. Now, she brings her largest project yet to The Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas, with The Beginning of Convenience, her first U.S. museum exhibition. The immersive installation recreates a nostalgic supermarket with thousands of handmade felt objects inspired by American retailers.
Sparrow has made a name for herself by transforming empty retail spaces into fully felted worlds. She launched this practice in 2014 and introduced it to American audiences in 2017 with 8 ’Till Late, a loving tribute to the New York City bodega that packed more than 9,000 felt objects into a single storefront and sold out within three weeks.
This new installation spans 400 square feet across three galleries and contains more than 20,000 individually hand-crafted felt artworks, making it the largest and most ambitious undertaking of Sparrow’s career.
The location carries its own layer of meaning. Bentonville is the hometown of Walmart, and The Momentary itself grew out of the vision of the Walton family. Sparrow built her installation around this history, recreating the golden age of American retail between 1975 and 1995. That era reshaped how people shopped and ate at home.
As more households relied on two incomes, families turned to microwave dinners, frozen foods, and other quick meal solutions that promised to save time in the kitchen. Sparrow’s felt supermarket captures this shift in loving, exhaustive detail, stocking its shelves with the packaged goods that defined convenience culture for an entire generation.
The first gallery immerses visitors in the supermarket itself. But ahoppers can also find an audio-visual department stocked with felt versions of bestselling VHS tapes and vinyl records, a nostalgic snack bar, and a Kodak photo center that recalls the days before digital photography. Sparrow based every display on extensive archival research, carefully recreating the colors, packaging, and branding that shaped American grocery stores during those two decades.
The second gallery shifts from the finished installation to Sparrow’s creative process. Visitors can watch a 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentary, along with a series of vintage-style television commercials created by the artist. The final gallery recreates Sparrow's studio in the United Kingdom, known as the Felt Cave. The space even includes a room filled entirely with felt bananas, a tribute to Sebastian, Sparrow’s longtime companion and self-described emotional support banana.
Sparrow describes the exhibition as a milestone in her career. She calls it an honor to debut her first American museum show at The Momentary, especially as the presentation coincides with her 10th year exhibiting work in the United States.
The Beginning of Convenience continues a lineage of playful, deeply researched installations that Sparrow has built across the globe, from corner shops and pharmacies to fast-food counters. Each project blurs the line between nostalgia and critique.
In Bentonville, that examination lands exactly where American convenience culture took root, turning a museum gallery into a soft, stitched monument to the shopping carts, snack aisles, and quick dinners that once defined an era.
Lucy Sparrow: The Beginning of Convenience is will be on view starting July 18, 2026, through July 11, 2027, at The Momentary in Bentonville, Arkansas.
British artist Lucy Sparrow is known for her felt creations of consumer goods, and now she has an upcoming immersive installation that transforms three galleries into a fully felted supermarket.
Lucy Sparrow, Bourdon Street Chippy (installation view), 2025. (Photo: Alun Callender, courtesy of @sewyoursoul)
The exhibition includes more than 20,000 handmade objects inspired by American retail from 1975 to 1995.
Located in Walmart’s hometown, it reflects on the era when convenience foods and packaged goods reshaped everyday shopping in America.
The products and spaces that defined convenience culture will be on display, including grocery aisles, a snack bar, a Kodak photo center, and an audio-visual department filled with felt VHS tapes and vinyl records.
Lucy Sparrow: The Beginning of Convenience will be on view at the Momentary starting July 18, 2026 and run through July 11, 2027. Admission is free.
