The artist behind the ‘Boob Garden’ and ‘Rave Coffin’ strikes again with ‘Crab Couch’ in South Philly

For the last two years, Rose Luardo has been exceedingly generous with her art, installing it for all to see in a vacant triangular lot in South Philly that was once home to Capt. Jesse G’s Crab Shack.

In 2023, she gifted the people of Philadelphia with the Boob Garden, a furniture set covered in handmade breast plushies, and the following year she gave us the Rave Coffin, a casket covered in tie-dyed felt that passersby could lie down inside of.

Luardo struck again Sunday night at the cement triangle at the intersection of Washington Avenue, Passyunk Avenue, and Eighth Street, but this time around, her guerrilla art installation was totally shellfish.

Crab Couch — which is exactly what it sounds like unless you’re thinking of the other kind of crabs, which it is not — is the latest work Luardo set up at what she calls Capt. Jesse G’s Crab Shack Gallery. That’s because the shuttered business’ sign inexplicably remains lording over the lot on a freestanding pole, even though the building was long-ago demolished.

Once just a regular white sofa that was looking for a new home on Facebook Marketplace, Luardo — a provocateur of the peculiar — rescued the couch and Frankenstein-ed that piece of furniture into a comfy crustacean.

With some papier-mâché, red house paint, and the help of her niece, Ingrid Rose Koppisch, and their friend, Simply Val, Luardo gave the couch six legs, a pair of judgey eyes, and two hulking claws, with one clamping down on a giant cigarette.

She first put the crabby patio furniture in a gallery show she had in September.

“I just had a feeling that this was not going to sell, but it would be a fun thing to make and eventually put out in my own personal art gallery at Capt. Jesse G’s,” Luardo said.

On Sunday night, she and her husband put Crab Couch on one of his skateboards and wheeled it up the street to the vacant lot.

Luardo noticed, as did I, that since the time of her installation last year, a taco truck has stationed itself at the edge of the lot and someone has bashed a small hole into the cement and created a modest fire pit, which Luardo placed the Crab Couch in front of. When I stopped by on Tuesday, the pit held an empty can of Modelo and an empty pack of Marlboro Lights.

“I was so psyched that was there!” Luardo said of the pit. “This is the dream coming true, which is that the space is becoming activated, people are hopefully hanging out, eating a taco, drinking a Modelo, and sitting on the couch.”

In the days since it was installed, the wind has done some damage to Crab Couch’s claws, which Luardo said neighbors came out to valiantly fix with drills. But its giant cigarette is nowhere to be found. It has become the ultimate Philly loosie.

Otherwise, all is good with Crab Couch.

I asked Luardo why she continues to put her art in such a hardscrabble lot, where it’s subject not only to weather but to something even more unpredictable — the whims of Philadelphians.

“It was built for this kind of experience and nobody has claimed it,” she said. “It’s just this … s— lot and I know there’s people walking by and it’s so much fun to see something crazy and delightfully weird. It puts a hitch in your giddy-up.”

According to city records, the lot is owned by 1100 Passyunk Partners LLC, which purchased the property for $2.85 million in 2020. A number for the group was not able to be located.

To whomever owns this eyesore — which has been a vacant lot since at least 2016 — I beseech you to gift it to Luardo, who’s shown more interest in it and has done more to improve it than you ever have.

The world is coming to Philadelphia next year and instead of having an empty, crumbling lot on one of the city’s busiest corridors, why not let Luardo show the world just how weird Philly can be?

I hear she’s been eyeing an inflatable nightclub on Temu.