Johnny Swing was born in 1961 in Salisbury, Connecticut. In 1984, he completed his BS in fine arts from Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine in 1986. He obtained his Class 1 Structural Steel Welding License #6120 in 1990. After spending the first part of his career in New York City's Lower East Side, where he exhibited sculptures and furniture made with salvaged industrial materials, Swing moved to Vermont in 1995, where he maintains a workshop and farm.

 Swing's coin furniture can be found in the permanent collections of notable institutions around the world, including the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, New York; Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, England; and the Modernism Museum, Mount Dora, Florida. His work has also been on view in numerous museum exhibitions, the Indianapolis Museum of Art; LongHouse Reserve, East Hampton; and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York. Most recently Swing was the recipient of a major retrospective in 2019 at the Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont.