"There's 15,000 items in here, and each one is hand-sewn, hand-stuffed, and hand-painted," the artist explains.
Felt makeup, felt toothpaste, felt perfume… This may look like a real pharmacy, but everything in this store is actually made of felt. The artist behind the exhibition is Lucy Sparrow from London, England.
“There's 15,000 items in here, and each one is hand-sewn, hand-stuffed, and hand-painted to make an entire artwork, which is 'The Chemist,' and that is an art installation that anyone can come and see,” she said.
And she adds that the project didn’t happen overnight. “The whole exhibition took about a year, a little over that because it kept getting postponed because of Covid. One single item probably takes about 20 minutes, but everything is made in batches, so it makes it a lot simpler to make, a lot of one thing in stages, and it's a whole process, yes.”
And although the pharmacy is made of felt, visitors can still make purchases. “So we've got the hand sanitizer that we've all been very accustomed to using over the last couple of months and years,” Lucy reveals. “And we've got Chanel No. 5, which is like your high-end stuff, and that is £120. So something for everyone.”
And the question on many people’s minds about the felt pharmacy: why? Lucy explains, saying, “people get an emotional response to it. They come in, they get overwhelmed, there's stuff all over the shelves, and I hope that it invokes nostalgia, a feeling of like calm, in a place where you wouldn't necessarily feel calm, but it offers sanity when maybe you're not quite feeling very sane.”
For the next month, art collectors can visit and support Lucy and her little felt pharmacy.
