The ever-popular question, "What if you made furniture out of..." has been answered yet again, and in a new way, by Johnny Swing. For years, Swing has made a medium out of United States currency, using coins to create tables, chairs, bowls, and benches, as well as creating pillows and teddy bears out of dollar bills. His work has attracted a broad range of collectors and fans with a penchant for the quirky, and he has just opened "Murmuration," a new show of his creations at Chelsea's Sebastian + Barquet. Earlier this week, ARTINFO managed to catch the Vermont-based coin-welder between gigs and ask him some questions in the hope of gaining insight into his highly unusal practice.
Are there any stories behind the pieces in your current show, "Murmuration." Why make furniture with money?
There are countless stories as with any designer or artist; the works, which are by definition stories, are a result of process and experience. Do you want to hear about the collision with a Grand Torino in Eagle Creek that left me in a coma then a cast and crutches for two years? I looked such a mess strangers kept offering me money on the subway. The first piece of metal I dragged to a vacant lot to create a sculpture park that ended up being an art movement "The Rivington School"; the gangrene and being in a non-payment ward in a hospital in Harlem for 22 days; the workshop in the East Village 2B — the neighbors threw bottles at me when I welded at night; the time a hundred NYPD officers rained down on us because we had thrown bags of railroad spikes off the Manhattan Bridge and they thought that they were drugs; meeting my wife while walking my dog; the junkie roommates; being one of the first three artists to test the federal Visual Artists Rights Act law. Lots of stories.
Why money? I learned to weld as a kid and started making furniture in the early '80s using whatever materials I could find, from steel I-beams to subway strap handles. Part of the reason I started using coins was that for found objects they were easy to find, and I’d begun welding flat round objects into forms in 1987 with the Tack chair.
By using money as medium, do you think that you make money feel banal or even disposable? Has making the furniture changed the way you look at money as an object?
No, quite the opposite. I always liked money. As objects and a form of social definition, money is honest, and while I love what I do and what I make, it is one of my life's goals not to be precious. Working with money has elevated that challenge. I’m a cheap Yankee and coming into work after a big push the previous day and seeing the floor strewn with coins is a challenge.
You've been making your art out of bills and coins for quite a while, but to many people, it couldn't be more timely, with so much talk about the weakness of the dollar, and so on. How do these kinds of economic concerns play into what you do?
I often think of the cliché "the almighty dollar"; it relieves all my concerns.
Given the vogue for sustainable development and sustainable design, another aspect of your art and furniture that seems really timely is the notion of reuse. Is this something you think about in relation to your work?
I like using familiar objects as materials in my work; it makes the work more accessible. This may sound like cheap tricks, but really my motivation comes from a belief that design is a sharing process. Aside from being comfortable, the more accessible the work is the more people might have access to the experience.
The people who buy your furniture, what are they actually like? Do they use it in their homes, or do they treat it more as a sculptural object?
I’ve always considered my collectors as almost collaborators. Originally I was an installation artist, surrounding the viewer with the work; the clear next step for me was furniture. With furniture, I can literally share the environment with the viewer.
What are you working on next?
Taking the winter tires off my wife’s car.