Catalog Entry from If These Walls Could Talk Exhibit, Neill-Cochran House 2020:

“Couch potato” is common parlance for a lazy TV-binging sloth. The last word in my title—Not!—requires us to reconsider those whom we might have labelled couch potatoes in the past, particularly people in poverty and people of color. The folks represented on the four cushions are from four different artists who depicted the nobility of labor. The common denominator here is potatoes. Potatoes appear in each image except on the cushion for George Washington Carver. He is included due to his notable experiments with sweet potatoes and peanuts, groundbreaking work that restored the income from Southern agriculture after the depletion of endless cotton fields that had demanded slave labor. A couch potato he was not. When I made this, I thought it would go on the sofa in the foyer, a very handsome piece of furniture. However, I learned that this particular sofa is well-used by visitors. It would not do anybody any favor to sit on one of these cushions, even if their fabrics appear soft. Apparently this is the sculpture that visitors most often attempt to touch.