Kate Swanson never wanted to be solely a gallerist or an interior designer, so it is serendipitous that her plan to open her first gallery next to her existing Burlington design studio didn’t work out exactly as envisioned.
She’d intended to cut a hole in the wall of her design studio, located in Karma Bird House on Maple Street, to connect it to the smaller room next door, then move the studio to the small room and convert the larger space to a gallery. But when pieces from the 15 artists in her inaugural exhibit began to arrive, some looked so much better against the deep teal wall of her studio than the pale yellow hue in the gallery.
So she mixed things up. An exhibition piece in the studio, a lamp by Yuxuan Huang ($2,500), casts warm light onto Swanson’s desk through its hand-painted Mashi paper shade that looks like delicate stained glass. Dotan Appelbaum’s diptych, meticulously constructed from colorful wood veneers ($3,200 per piece), hangs on the wall behind, just above Charles Grantham’s sleek brass-and-mahogany floating console ($5,500). Similarly, Swanson’s studio has migrated into the gallery. She placed a rustic round table and its matching stools in a corner as a place to meet with clients.
She works surrounded by pieces she loves. “It’s a big win,” she said. The gallery flows into her studio, and her studio into the gallery. Both are named Nurture by Nature.
“This concept came from that idea of bringing people together and showing them beautiful things within the studio space,” she said. “It always was a hybrid to me of the interior design studio and the gallery.”
The gallery opened on September 4, with furniture, lighting and collectible décor among the 34 works in her first show, titled “Unknown Friends.” The contemporary designs marry function with art.
Strips of pebbled copper form the door of Luke Malaney’s tall, shallow “Gambler Cabinet” ($13,000). Its smooth, egg-shaped wooden knob is therapeutic to touch. Ceramics drape like fabric around the rim of Anna Gukov’s “Brimming Chalice of Delight” ($750). And a shallow rectangular steel pan appears to float on vibrant colored light in each of Ford Bostwick’s minimalist “Mira” sconces ($635).
All the featured makers are from the Northeast. None lives in Vermont, though Grantham, whose floating console is in the show, has a physics degree from the University of Vermont. He lives in Brooklyn.
Swanson, 38, started her architectural and interior design business five years ago in Jackson Hole, Wyo. The Fletcher native had graduated from Sarah Lawrence University intending to become an art teacher. She moved west, where she found her passion working as a project manager for an architect. Subsequent work at an interior design company provided experience designing large-scale renovations and luxury interiors. She stayed in Jackson Hole for 13 years, longer than she had expected.
“It just was an incredible place to be creative,” she said, “and then it became an incredible place to design just because of the volume of wealth and work that was coming in.” She helped create an outdoor “snow globe” with a heated bedroom for one client’s Christmas Eve. Another job involved designing the interior of a new, 8,000-square-foot home, only to see the owners put it on the market as the project neared completion. It sold, Swanson said, “and we redid the same house again for a completely new couple.”
She moved back to Vermont in 2022 with her husband and then-infant daughter and moved her business to Karma Bird House a year later. While she still has clients in Wyoming, she also does work in New Hampshire and Vermont.
“Unknown Friends” is sentimental for Swanson. She selected items that evoke memories of her childhood, and she scattered old family photos among them. Atop John Wells’ blackened steel side table ($3,000) are two snapshots of a preschool-age Swanson wearing a red pinafore. She’s barefoot and smiling broadly as she stands in front of the green screen door and weathered white clapboard of her childhood home.
“Unknown Friends” is on view by appointment through October 30 at Gallery Nurture by Nature in Burlington. n-by-n.com
This article appears in Sept 17-23, 2025.
