Brian Swanson

by Kathleen Knight

It’s impossible to keep a straight face while viewing Brian Swanson’s faces: whimsical masks constructed of odd, found metal bits and pieces, bearing titles as funny as the pieces themselves. Brian calls the masks “sketches,” casual spinoffs of his more formal furniture. Both forms share a delight in surprising the viewer with unexpected forms created from repurposed materials.

Swanson’s furniture, for which he is best known, is formal only in the sense that it is functional and very comfortable. Massive tables with beautiful wood, stone or metal tops, high stools of shaped perforated metal, deep lounge chairs with arms wide enough to accommodate a drink, a couple of books and a small vase of flowers, and a laugh-out-loud, diminutive chair with a stove manifold for an arm and worm gear leg are just a few of his works you’ll find at Gallery 24 in Torrey, Utah. Such humorous visions come as a surprise to those who know only his quiet, soft-spoken side.

Swanson’s skill and creativity with metal flow naturally from his early background. Born and raised in Rockford, Illinois – at the time “the machine tool capitol of the world,” he proudly states – Swanson grew up in a family loaded with engineers. He began working for his father at the age of thirteen, learning how to fabricate, repair and detail packaging machines; Oscar Meyer bologna and Curtis candy bars were some of the items wrapped by the machines they produced. In those pre-computer times, detailing meant drawing each part by hand. Swanson also learned to make custom parts as needed, including for his own Harley chopper. He says he learned from the experienced machinists in his father’s machine shop, “the old masters.”

At college he majored in art, but to support himself and his family Swanson worked in construction for several years, completing projects as intimate as home remodels and as major as sewage treatment plants. After serving in Vietnam for two years, he moved to northern Utah, where he continued to work in construction while skiing and taking art classes whenever possible.

In the mid-‘70’s Swanson enrolled in the graduate program in sculpture at Central Washington University. At first he “tried to make things that look like art,” but soon realized that his own direction was very different. A local character, Stan “the Man” Barnett, sold him farm machinery parts and other items from his junkyard that Swanson used for his class assignments, inventing useless machines and other projects. The faculty committee that judged his final M.A. project questioned whether his fabrications were art. He turned the question around and managed to convince the committee that any definition of art was too broad and vague to exclude his approach, and his M.A. degree was approved. Or, as he puts it today, “If this ain’t art, what is it?”

In the early ‘80’s Swanson’s marriage ended, and he moved to Seattle with his son. He returned to construction and moved into a management position, overseeing large corporate projects. The job was “not a good fit,” but it allowed him to send his son to a good school. Meanwhile his art was beginning to be shown in a number of galleries across the country and by 1987 he was able to devote himself full-time to art, combining his studio practice with an installation business that serviced museums, banks, and other public institutions.

Swanson now lives in Utah’s Wayne County, a place he has been coming to since the ‘70s when he began to come on annual vacations to fish and hike with friends. In 1986 he bought ten acres near the town of Teasdale. When, in 1993, he introduced Wayne County to his new spouse, Pat Priebe-Swanson, she fell in love with the area, too. The local landscape inspired her to begin painting. They built a house on Brian’s property, and settled there permanently in 1999. Swanson had always wanted to be “off the grid,” and they have succeeded magnificently, creating a beautiful, functional home, with a great deal of hard work.|2| They did almost all of the construction themselves, partly out of necessity, because local builders were unfamiliar with solar-powered home-building.

Patricie Priebe-Swanson and Brian Swanson at the house they built in Teasdale, Utah

For several years the couple would spend a few winter months at Priebe-Swanson’s cabin on a remote island in the San Juans, a dramatic contrast with the high desert of Teasdale. They sold it eventually because it was too hard to maintain two homes, and there was no studio or shop space.

In 2001 the couple joined two artist friends, Karen Kessler and Sally Elliott, to open Gallery 24 — a place to exhibit contemporary art by themselves and others — in a rehabilitated building in Torrey. Three years later, Kessler and Elliott moved away, but Swanson and Priebe-Swanson still own and run the gallery, which shows mostly local and regional artists.

During the season, April through October, the gallery is open six days a week, and it’s difficult for the couple to make their art and also staff the gallery. They say it would be impossible without the two volunteers who take over two days a week: artist Ray Conrad, and Jerome West, husband of another local artist, Nancy Green. Swanson also says that the others are much better than he at engaging the public, so he’s always grateful to them and their more outgoing personalities. The gallery is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Priebe-Swanson’s ink and watercolor landscapes have always been among the gallery’s most popular offerings, and Swanson’s furniture fills the floor space.

Swanson’s art has always tended toward the functional and practical because, he says, it’s less scary to design something useful than to confront a blank canvas. His public work has been moving in the direction of “humanizing spaces,” through landscape design, sculptures, plantings, and site work. He’s on Public Art Rosters for Washington State and other entities. One of his public projects is a beautiful pair of 15-foot tall metal chess pieces, king and queen, with seating and tables, at Denver’s downtown light rail station. He’s especially proud of a recent installation at Columbia Basin College in Washington that incorporates arbors — in spring the wisteria assaults the senses — red rock, and benches.

Benches have become a popular staple of his work. He designed and built benches for the Magna Senior Center, and in his own town of Teasdale he has built three memorial benches in the town park. Each bench includes the same surprising and delightful elements that he’s been working with since the beginning. One bench, in honor of a ranching couple, includes a tractor seat at each end; on another he fashioned an arm that holds a real glove, to remind us of the man who always wore work gloves. When he’s not working in the studio or at the gallery, or skiing, or fishing on Boulder Mountain, he’s likely to be scrounging for interesting bits of scrap metal in friends’ backyards and old town dumps. As long as there are elements to discard, we can depend on Brian Swanson to use it to surprise and please and make art we can live with, and laugh with.

Brian Swanson’s work can be seen at Gallery 24 in Torrey, Utah or online at www.brianswansonarts.com.

15 Bytes

UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.