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You have plywood bones. Their faces are painted on, they smile constantly, they never blink. They cannot move, and yet they have to.
This is not the beginning of an episode of Tales from the Crypt, although there is some tension.
You see, Austin’s Couch Potatoes has to move out of her furniture store in North Austin by the end of December. Don’t you know where that is? “Of course you do. Outside there is a trio of Godzilla-sized potatoes, constantly leaning back on an equally huge sofa. They’re hard to miss as you drive along Interstate 35 between Austin and Round Rock. That is the point.
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The names of the potatoes are Brian, Travis, and Dan if you ever wondered.
Austin’s Couch Potatoes recently lost their lease on the location, says co-owner Brian Morgan, a potato namesake along with partners Travis Morgan, brother, and Dan Anthony. (He says he can’t betray the new tenant.)
Those smiling, sedentary strengths probably can’t keep up, says Morgan. So Austin’s Couch Potatoes is looking for someone to give them a new home.
The furniture dealers started in Morgan’s garage about 10 years ago, he says, first selling refurbished pieces on Craigslist. They saved up for a couple of years and moved to the showroom on I-35, their first location in town.
“We took a building with what is probably the worst highway connection you can imagine,” he says. The entrance to the parking lot was covered. Customers would miss the turn or drive across the lawn to get to the store. But if they did all of that, then they were probably ready to buy some furniture, Morgan thought. They just needed something to “make a big splash” and attract people.
“We once had billboards on the side of the freeway and they were just incredibly expensive,” says Morgan. It also found that the city of Austin’s couch potatoes wouldn’t allow a billboard to be put up next to their business, he adds, as they didn’t have square footage for signage.
The owners have studied marketing tactics. They wanted something that was “cutting through and memorable” that reflected the weirdness of their hometown.
There was a block next to the store that was zoned for salable presentations, Morgan says. They thought of setting up a rubber dinghy one day. Instead, they got a “giant statue of the sofa gods,” he says.
A friend named Andy Davis, then a local artist, told the owners that he made props for theme parks in the 1970s and 1980s. He offered to build a huge sofa for the furniture store to display on the side of the road and sketched it on a napkin. Morgan thought the idea was great and Davis told him it would be ready in a couple of weeks.
A few days later, Davis returned with another sketch. He couldn’t sleep – visions of rust danced in his head. He designed three huge potato figures to sit on the couch.
The idea seemed bigger than the pyramids, says Morgan. He loved it.
Artists Faith Schexnayder and Ryan Day worked with Davis on the project, and Jerry Fryer directed construction. The sofa frame was built with plywood and two by four. The crew poured cement and anchored it at the exhibition site. Molded foam fitted between the plywood skeleton pieces of the spuds; the big boys were covered with wire mesh and mastic. Then an artist painted the potatoes with an eternal grin with weatherproof paint.
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The price went up: “Artists are great creatives, but they’re not that good at math,” says Morgan with a laugh.
Six months later, the huge sofa and its occupants were installed in six modular parts in front of Austin’s Couch Potatoes, says Morgan. You had to use a crane. Each potato has an eye hook on its crown with which it can be lifted into its long, long rest.
The structure sits 22 feet high and 34 feet long. Morgan now estimates it cost around $ 70,000 – still less than a billboard would have been in the long run. And to get around the zoning problem, the giant potatoes have technically always been a commodity, says Morgan.
“It’s for sale. I told people, ‘Yeah, it’s $ 200,000 if you want to buy it,’ ”he says.
It put Austin’s couch potatoes on the map, says Morgan. Children would ask their parents to drive into the parking lot. People came from far and wide to see it. Morgan recalls that the owners of the world’s largest potato brought their own giant soda for a photo op from Idaho.
Morgan tried to get the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest sofa, but says the process is too cumbersome – you either have to wait a long time for a representative to rate the record or pay an “exorbitant fee” to get it fly judgment from Australia faster.
“It’s vanity,” he says of the world record. “I do not need it. I already have the giant sofa. ”
Brian, Travis and Dan – the potatoes, not the people – have been through a lot. Morgan says the installation once withstood a “little tornado” as well as this year’s winter storms. It collected a couple of bullet holes, but he says they aren’t noticeable. Someone’s probably using them for target practice, he adds.
However, in a little less than a decade, the potatoes may have encountered a force they cannot withstand: the booming Austin real estate market. Austin’s Couch Potatoes has two other locations, one on Ben White Boulevard and one on North Lamar Boulevard, where Morgan would like to move the statue if it could. He doesn’t think the city would go along with it.
So the Spuds are looking for shelter. Morgan has played through scenarios in his head and speaks of the future with a sense of possibility. Maybe it will become a climbing attraction, or it will be converted into a habitable structure for vacation rentals, or Morgan herself could move in. Perhaps it could become part of a larger art space like the Junk Cathedral. An Idaho potato farmer looking for a roadside attraction? Morgan is open to it.
He just wants the potatoes to bring joy wherever they land.
“I would do anything that affects most people,” he says. “That was the advantage of having this thing, it makes people smile.” He would prefer not to hide it on private property, but would sell it if the time came. He would love to find an accessible, local home in the city he grew up in; he and his brother grew up in southeast Austin.
“If it was something that was Austin, I would give it away,” he says.
As for moving the structure … they’ll find out when they get there. Morgan says a fundraiser might be involved.
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“It’s definitely posable,” he says. “It would be moved in six sections and placed on a trailer.”
Morgan knows there are so many creative people in this city, so the future of the statue rests with whoever has the best idea. If you are ready to move on to the story, he would be honored to share it.
“I really want it to have a home,” he says, “if Austin wants to keep it somewhere.”
Can you give these potatoes a home?
Interested parties with ideas on what to do with Austin’s Couch Potatoes Sofa-and-Spuds installation, including artists and potential buyers, can email bigmove@austincouches.com.
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