Recycling Project of the Day: MetroCard Collages

Nina Boesch finds her inspiration in what other people throw away.

For the past ten years, Boesch has been collecting thousands of discarded MetroCards from NYC subway stations and fashioning these beautiful four-color Metro Card Collages out of their fragments. What began as a fun project for friends and family is now a booming business, with museum exhibits on both coasts and collages in private hands in France, Scotland, and Australia. The skyline image above is for sale for $3,400.

The limited palette-- blue, black, white and the unmistakable burnished orange-yellow -- gives her work a distinctive appearance. (The collages also have an uncanny resemblance to the decorative mosaics favored by the MTA.) They range from 5 x 7 inches to 30 x 40, and the subjects are generally New York-themed, from Robert de Niro to the New York Times front page to Ebbets Field. Boesch, who trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, also does custom collages.

All images courtesy of Nina Boesch.