Mark deJong’s Swing House puts Camp Washington on the map

From the outside, artist Mark deJong’s contemporary art installation, Swing House, looks much like any other 19th-century home in Cincinnati’s Camp Washington neighborhood. However, just take a look inside and you’ll discover the remarkable floor plan and iconic single swing that Colossal magazine recently featured as “a piece of art in itself.”

Mark deJong formed the seat of the swing from reddish pine salvaged from inside the home. Its natural-fiber rope attachments extend 30-feet into the air, and are secured into a metal beam from the home’s three-story ceiling. It is here that deJong painted a black and white hour glass shape, a nod to the motif of passing time represented in the pendulum-like swing.

The installation took three years to build, but had been a dream of deJong’s for nearly thirty. He originally thought of the idea shortly after finishing art school. “I stopped making art for 20 years, so this house was my leap back into the art world,” he explains. He has worked in construction for the past several decades, so this art-based house was a way for him to marry his formal training with his lifelong career.

Read more about deJong’s Swing House here.