When Lucy Sparrow thinks of New York City, she thinks of “Sesame Street.”
“As a kid, when I was watching shows based in New York, that’s what I saw and became familiar with,” the artist says in reference to Jim Henson’s metropolitan muppets.
Now, Sparrow is bringing plush, anthropomorphic creations of her own to Manhattan, moving her latest installation east of its summer home in Montauk, N.Y.
Feltz Bagels is an homage to the city’s great appetizing stores: iconic monuments that personify New York’s long-standing kinship with Jewish culture. Using her preferred medium of felt, Sparrow has crafted a vibrant, nostalgic storefront packed with soft sculptures of bagels, schmear and other deli staples — many of them with faces.
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“We’ve got whitefish, we’ve got raisin challah, we’ve got some new flavors of babka,” Sparrow tells WWD. “I’m trying to focus on quintessentially Jewish products.”
The artist took inspiration from beloved New York institutions like Russ & Daughters, Zabar’s and Katz’s. Even the store’s name is a tribute to Jewish broadcaster Vanessa Feltz, who hails from Sparrow’s native England.
“My research consisted of going to as many delis and bagel shops as I could,” she says. “I’m gathering every single bit of information, including the layout of the stock, how things are presented in their stock fitting. It’s that kind of stuff that you can’t see in photos.”
Sparrow presented her first fully felted emporium, which was modeled after a British corner store, with help from a crowdfunding campaign. Following its opening in 2014, the exhibition was an immediate success, leading Sparrow to erect felt bodegas, pharmacies, fast food eateries and even sex shops. She’s since transported her cuddly, colorful realms to various corners of the globe, bringing shows to London, Los Angeles and Beijing.
Sparrow launched Feltz Bagels in collaboration with TW Fine Art. The owner of the Montauk gallery, Mike De Paola, is a longtime collector of Sparrow’s. After staging Feltz there from August to September, Sparrow plans to bring her bagel shop to Miami in December.
What sets Feltz Bagels apart from Sparrow’s previous exhibitions is that it allows patrons to customize their art piece, not unlike how one would customize their bagel order. This personalized thread runs through all of Sparrow’s work: she and her team cut, sew and embroider every felt food product by hand, down to the beaded poppyseeds on her “everything bagel.”
“One thing that I’ve always found is so important with my work is that even though there are multiples, each piece is essentially one of a kind because no one is ever made exactly the same,” Sparrow says.
Between 16 bagels and 44 different toppings, the choices are nearly endless. At Feltz, Sparrow serves as the deli clerk, constructing each customer’s bagel to their liking.
“You get to have that interaction with the artist that you wouldn’t normally have at a gallery,” she explains. “It’s very experiential, it’s very individual, and hopefully, it’s something that people will never forget.”
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By handing over the reins to her customers, Sparrow seeks to challenge the traditionally rigid roles of the art world, turning the spectator into a participant. She cites Erwin Wurm’s “One Minute Sculptures” as an influence. The Austrian artist invites viewers to pose with inanimate objects in his critically acclaimed series.
Even in the age of Instagrammable installations like The Museum of Ice Cream, Sparrow says that some visitors still aren’t quite accustomed to having an immersive experience with art.
“I try to have as little input as possible when people are building their bagels,” she explains. “People are like, Oh, ‘What would you do?’ and I’m like, ‘No, this is your bagel, this is your time to curate it,’ and you are your own curator basically. Giving over that control is definitely something that I haven’t done before.”
Feltz Bagels will be located at 209 East 3rd Street from Oct. 3 to 31. Operating hours are between 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. EST.