NEW YORK TIMES PROFILES ARTIST JOHNNY SWING

These days Mr. Swing, 59, works a short drive down the mountain from his home in a 5,500-square-foot studio he designed himself, with high ceilings, soaring windows and dedicated spaces for carving, modeling and welding. A small team assists him in creating his sculptures of twisted steel cable and repurposed metal objects, his architectonic lighting fixtures and — the thing everyone knows Johnny Swing for — his sofas, chairs and benches made from shimmering coins.

Typically, he makes only a handful of coin pieces a year, as each design requires thousands of nickels, quarters, half-dollars or dollar coins, all meticulously joined with upward of 60,000 welds, depending on the size of the piece and the coin used. The metalworking alone can stretch to 300 hours or more, sometimes spread out over months.

Intense and playful, Mr. Swing has an expansive, restless energy. "I'm too old to have been diagnosed with A.D.D. or whatever, but I'm kind of manic and I love to bounce between two and three different things going at once," he said. He's been known to take breaks by bombing around the adjacent field on his snowmobile at 100 miles per hour.

Lately, Mr. Swing has been focused on his most challenging body of coin furniture yet. It's a group of seven biomorphic designs that fit together, puzzle-like, in a configuration that suggests an undulating landscape or, more whimsically, a fried egg. There's a circular stool or table that forms the "yolk," while sculptural seats of varying shapes and dimensions compose the "white."

Mr. Swing also likened the swirling forms to sea creatures that, nested together, call to mind a whale.

Planned as the centerpiece of his debut solo show with the Tribeca design gallery R & Company —his first in New York City in eight years — the new designs are being produced in two versions, one made with nickels and one with dollar coins. (Because of the coronavirus outbreak, the show was moved from May tentatively to the fall.) The works will be sold as complete sets and separately, with individual pieces starting around $20,000.

"Johnny is a leader in the American studio furniture movement, a renegade D.I.Y.-type artist and craftsman who's taken an everyday commodity and used his technical skills as a welder to turn it into a luxury material," said Zesty Meyers, R & Company's co-founder. "People are hungry for things that are uniquely handmade. It's the defining taste for billionaires today."

Mr. Swing's choice of coins as a medium invites a variety of interpretations. Is the work a wry critique of capitalism? A wink at the investment value of art and luxury furnishings? A commentary on our obsession with money? Studies that have shown that simply touching currency can elevate people's emotional states, and a Swing sofa or chair invites sitters to immerse themselves in cold, hard — though surprisingly comfortable — cash.

But Swing is no ideologue. He views coins as an intriguingly malleable, multivalent material and as "beautiful little sculptures in their own right." Having always repurposed found and castoff materials, he likes that coins possess past lives, trading hands countless times and traveling unknowable distances.

To read the complete article, see:
Newly Minted Work by a Change Artist (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/arts/johnny-swing-coin-artist.html)

To read earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
JOHNNY SWING'S COIN FURNITURE (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v13n13a24.html)
ARTIST JOHNNY SWING'S PENNY CHAIR (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v19n46a47.html)
VERMONT ARTIST CREATES FURNITURE USING COINS (https://www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v14n17a25.html)

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