As soon as the show opened, it felt like I was on holiday because working the show is a piece of cake compared to the production stage.”
Yet, Sparrow persisted. And although her work has continued to rise in reputation, the actual day-to-day process of creating the items that populate these stores is laborious as ever (if not moreso) to meet the demand for her thousands of products. When asked what this all really looks like day to day, she offers some insight: Most days, she rises at 6:45 a.m., her assistant soon arriving, and “sticks the kettle on.” The artist lives in a caravan parked outside of her studio, so she says it’s really just “a case of rolling out of bed and into a pile of felt.” They work until around 4 p.m., and then between 5 p.m. and 10 p.m., the artist begins to paint. She says Netflix has been her prime accompaniment for these slots, for absorbing selections to aid productivity. “Throughout the day, we listen to true crime podcasts, brit pop, ‘80s power ballads, pretty much anything you can sing along to,” she says. “If there’s a massive deadline, I unleash the disco playlist, but that’s only for emergencies because it can make you go a bit mental.”
The products haven’t always been so everyday. In the past, she’s fashioned far more exotic objects: dynamite, gasmasks, grenades, machine guns, and blades in a weapons store; and whips, vibrators, penis enlargers, and buttplugs in a sex shop. But the diversity and sheer number of different products in her current stories are on a far grander scale. In another interview, the artist has called her work a “soft recreation of everyday life” or the makings of an “alternate universe.” But it’s meticulous work, creating each singular product: All of the pieces of fresh fruit, the rows of VHS movies and cassette tapes, all depicting the well-known real cover of cult favorites, self-help books, all of that Spam, each of these items come at the cost of cramping and long stints in the studio. 8 ‘Till Late has brought the biggest physical challenge for the artist yet, compared to her previous efforts. “I think I wasn’t prepared for how much my hand would hurt from all the painting,” Sparrow says. “I felt like some kind of athlete from all the lifting and running around. I was constantly working through lists, putting out metaphorical fires, and shifting piles of stuff from one room to the other. As soon as the show opened, it felt like I was on holiday because working the show is a piece of cake compared to the production stage.”
Back in June, one Huffington Post piece priced the entire store at $500,000. But it’s more fun to take a look at the labels for each singular felt work: $35 for a slice of pizza, $50 for a can of Guinness, or $60 for a copy of The Matrix. In the real world where these items are their real counterparts, visitors would scoff. But for a piece of Sparrow’s world and memories, the prices inside 8 ‘Till Late feel like a bargain. The economy of what she’s doing—in a philosophical sense—is at times reduced to some send-up of capitalism. “I think the one that annoys me the most is when my work is described as a criticism of consumerism,” Sparrow tell us. “It’s definitely about consumerism, for sure, but it’s always been meant in a distracted emotional response to wanting and needing things to escape real life.”
