“During the interaction between the viewer and the work of art a sharing occurs, the senses are alerted, and a primal experience is generated by being on/in the work. A feeling of bliss, a surprise, a sense of oneness and belonging exists. After the initial shock of the experience comes the inevitable investigation on the part of the viewer, and what was once limited to the eyes is now open to the flesh.”

Johnny Swing (b. 1961, “Artist Statement.” one of the foremost exponents of the American Studio Furniture movement, specializing in “objects of refulgence with money”)

In keeping with the way most articles begin about Johnny Swing, I suppose that I should start this post by saying:

Yes. That’s his real name.

But this isn’t just any article about Johnny Swing. So I don’t need to start by declaring that it’s his real name. (Just for the record, it is.)

So I’ll move on to the backstory, which is where I planned to begin anyway. Backstories have a way of getting to the heart of the matter.

This backstory begins when I was planning my Vermont trip to launch my recently published edition of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman’s Green Mountain Stories.

For the Brattleboro part of my journey, I started looking for a VRBO home that was pet friendly. (I had intended to take my dog Ruby, but that part of my best-laid plan went astray, as you may recall from my post “A Road Trip Beyond Expectations.”)

I found a charming cottage situated on a farm, sixteen miles or so outside of Brattleboro. That was a little further away than I desired, but the cottage and the farm seemed so idyllic that I knew my stay there was written in the stars.

I reached out to the owners, and within 24 hours, we had sealed the deal. They emailed me precise directions, gave me their cell phone numbers, and ended with this charmer:

Our house … is the white house on your left. Turn in the first driveway and go between the house and garage up the little hill, and the guest house will be off to the left. We will leave the guest house open and the key hanging by the door.

I smiled a wider than usual smile, whispering to myself: we will leave the house open and the key hanging by the door.

Still smiling, I replied:

Thanks for reminding me why Vermont has such a special place in my heart.

As my trip drew closer, I decided to Google my own set of directions. When I added the address of the cottage where I would be staying, I was stunned by what popped up: Johnny Swing Welding.

OMG. I was beside myself. Can this be THE Johnny Swing–“one of the most celebrated exponents of the American Studio Furniture Movement?”

I had heard of THIS Johnny Swing, and I had actually seen some of his work in Sotheby’s catalogues. The artist who earned his Fine Arts degree from Skidmore College and later obtained his Class 1 Structural Steel Welding License. The artist whose coin-based furniture contours to the natural curves of the human body, and comfortably so, I might add. The artist whose sofa “All the King’s Men” (welded of JFK half dollars) fetched $155,000 at Christie’s.

A little research confirmed that THIS Johnny Swing and the Johnny Swing in whose cottage I would be staying were one and the same.

I was ecstatic. Actually, I was smitten. I immediately fired off a short one-sentence email:

I love your sculpture.

Sara, his wife, replied:

I’ll tell Johnny. He will be happy to give you a tour of his shop if you would like.

“I would be thrilled,” I replied.

How’s them apples? The world-acclaimed Johnny Swing has a shop. Lesser artists have studios. But then, Johnny Swing doesn’t need to be pretentious. And he isn’t.

The day before I arrived, Sara emailed me again:

In case you are a poker player, we are having a big poker party tomorrow night about 6 or so. At least stop by for burgers. (Beef and vegetarian.) It’s Johnny’s birthday this weekend.

When I arrived, I met Sara, as she unloaded groceries from her car. We had a great chat about a food co-op that I had just visited in a neighboring town. I felt as if I had known Sara for a long, long time, so much so that I knew she would understand that I was road weary and simply had to beg off both Friday night invitations.

I drove on up the stone’s-throw distance to the guest house, and, indeed, it was as they said it would be. The door was unlocked, and the key was hanging by the door. As I found out later, the guest house was Johnny Swings’s grandmother’s artist studio, originally situated adjacent to the main house. With Swing ingenuity, Johnny took cranes, moved it uphill closer to the pasture, retained the original studio with its exposed wooden beams, added several more rooms, and created a welcoming and refreshing guest house. The deck–on two sides, both facing pastureland–is shaped like the bow of a ship, supported by massive steel girders, nowhere to be seen from the top.

Inside the cottage, I felt right at home. Everything–well, nearly everything–looked just like the website photos. However, when I walked into my bedroom, I saw two chairs that weren’t included in the website photos. I knew immediately that Johnny Swing had made those chairs. Secured to a splayed-leg steel frame, the continuous chair seat and back looked like identically sized glass cylinders arranged with mathematical precision. Unlike most of Swing’s other pieces, these are not made of coins. Each chair is made of baby-food jars, 96 to be precise. I know. I counted. Each row is 6 baby-food jars wide, and there are 16 rows, running from the front lip of the seat to the uppermost part of the back. The bottoms of the jars face outward. The lids secure each jar to short stainless-steel rods anchored to the chair’s stainless-steel frame.

I was mesmerized, first, by the light streaming in the windows, shimmering around inside each jar, and beaming off in all directions onto the polished but bare hardwood floor. It was a chair, but it was more than a chair. It was a magical kaleidoscope teasing me to sit on its ever-changing brilliance.

I felt compelled to touch the chair. When I did, I was mesmerized again. How could glass jars–bottoms up, all lined up in rows with gaps between each jar–feel so solid, so smooth, and so soft all at the same time?

By then, the chair (whose seductive sensuality I had been enjoying) invited me to sit. I did. At that moment, I was mesmerized for a third time. The chair was remarkably–no, amazingly–comfortable. It fit the contours of my buttocks and the curves of my back, as if it had been made just for me. As I sat, I continued watching as each of the jars surrounding me captured the sunlight momentarily and then tossed the rays onto the hardwood floor to be absorbed into the fleeting foreverness of now. I sat and sat and sat for a long, long, long while before allowing myself to be mesmerized all over again by becoming one with the second chair.

Before I knew it, the sun was going down. I retreated to the bed, not to sleep but rather to lie there, looking to see what I could see. Looking directly ahead and through the window flanked by the two chairs, I could see sheep and several cows grazing in the pasture. To the right, a small barn, its once bright redness weathered to soft burgundy. Further up the hill and on the pasture’s edge, the sugar shack. (Yes: Johnny Swing makes his own maple syrup under the label Spring Farm.)

Below the window was a Swing table, supported by a stainless-steel frame–rather industrial looking–with a magnificent top, about 3 inches thick, made of multiple layers of glass. One of the interior layers was cracked. Swing incorporated it into the table anyway as his way of creating art from what he finds and as a reminder of the beauty to be found in our brokenness.

Looking overhead, I was spellbound by the light fixture suspended by a copper rod: two shades of hammered copper–reminding me of sombrero rims–each with a lighted jar attached at a whimsical, non-vertical, cock-eyed angle.

Saturday and Sunday found me busy with my research. In the back of my mind both days, of course, was the lingering hope of meeting Johnny Swing in person and having a tour of his shop.

When I looked out my window Monday morning, I saw Sara and Johnny ambling to the pasture to feed the cows and sheep. I knew that this was my moment. As they made their way out of the pasture, I made my way out of the house, walking briskly toward them. I introduced myself to Johnny, and we shook hands.

Do you have time to see my shop today?

Absolutely.

Let me have a little breakfast, and we’ll head off.

Not long afterward, we were on our way. Johnny was impressed by my Jeep Gladiator and suggested that we drive up a weathered, washed-out, one-lane road to the top of the mountain so that he could show me the camp that he and his father had built there years ago.

The drive up was slow and easy, as was our conversation touching on everything from our upbringing, our college days, our loves and our losses, and the power of new beginnings.

When we reached the top, I was speechless. The stunning home that I saw–though needing some tender loving care–could never be called a camp. But then again, I guess that it can be called a camp just as readily as Johnny can call his studio a shop.

Johnny eased himself into a deck chair–one of a pair made by one of his college friends–while I photographed him and the house and the majestic views of the mountains that the house and Johnny and I faced.

We stayed and continued chatting and then made the slow descent down the mountain, past Johnny’s home and my cottage.

The shop was only a mile or so away, and I had passed it daily without realizing what I was passing.

We entered. As Johnny turned on the lights, he came alive. His shop, his theater in the round. I, his solitary morning audience. His face, always pleasant and relaxed, beamed an inner joy that made him glow as he showed me around, lifting many of the coin sculptures to point out the precise artistry of the underlying structures and to show me some of the Styrofoam molds that serve as initial building blocks for his larger metallic pieces.

I was joyed beyond joy to see Kora-lle which I had seen in a catalog somewhere or other. Johnny could not help himself: the expansive “tongue “chair licked him in, and he leaned back in a moment of bliss that is as fresh in my mind as if I had just witnessed his lounging there.

If I was smitten by Johnny Swing’s art before fate destined me to be a guest in his cottage–and I was–I was even more smitten now that I had seen him in action in his shop.

After his up-close-and-personal tour, we headed back: Johnny, to his home; I, to my cottage. Before my thank yous and our goodbyes, I gave Johnny signed copies of my Green Mountain Stories and In Bed: My Year of Foolin’ Around.

I looked at my watch. It was noon. Can you imagine? Johnny Swing had gifted me the entire morning of his 62nd birthday.