SHELBURNE, VT.- Johnny Swing: Design Sense is on view at Shelburne Museum from February 2, through June 2, 2019. The exhibition is the first in a new series that explores the creative processes of innovative artists and designers working throughout New England today.

Based in Brookline, Vermont, Johnny Swing is best known for his luxurious coin furniture and large-scale architectural lighting. Johnny Swing: Design Sense provides visitors with a fascinating glimpse into the various phases of the artist’s philosophy and practice, from the early conceptual stages of sketching and model making to fabricating molds and engineering the structural elements, culminating in sophisticated works that blur the lines between art and design.

Johnny Swing: Design Sense pulls back the welding curtain to reveal this internationally renowned studio furniture maker’s creative process and experimental designs. Unlike a traditional museum exhibition, which treats preparatory sketches and models as adjuncts to finished works of art, Johnny Swing: Design Sense flips the script by venerating Swing’s arsenal of specialized tools, works in progress, never-before-seen prototypes, and lesser-known but equally impressive lighting designs.

In another departure from standard exhibition practice, the entire show has been narrated in Swing’s voice. Instead of traditional texts written by the curator, the texts accompanying the works on view take the form of Swing leading visitors through his thought processes, in an attempt to approximate the informative and entertaining experience of a private studio tour.

Founded in 1947 by sugar heiress and pioneering folk art collector Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888–1960), Shelburne Museum is the largest art and history museum in northern New England and Vermont’s foremost public resource for visual art and material culture. The museum is now open year-round, with the Pizzagalli Center for Art and Education and Webb Gallery featuring important American paintings by Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, Grandma Moses, John Singleton Copley, and many more.