MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
New Yorkers said goodbye to an iconic piece of their city last week - the MetroCard. For decades, people swiped the yellow-and-blue cards to pass through subway turnstiles. They're no longer needed in this era of tap-and-go credit cards and smartphones. The retirement of the MetroCard has special meaning for the artist Thomas McKean. He spent years building sculptures and assembling collages using cut-up bits of MetroCards. Thomas McKean, welcome.
THOMAS MCKEAN: Thanks very much. Glad to be here.
KELLY: How many works of art have you made from MetroCards by now?
MCKEAN: You know, I have lost count. I'd say at least a few hundred.
KELLY: Wow - a few hundred. I was having a look at some of them on your website. I couldn't quite see the scale of - like, you've made a car out of MetroCards.
MCKEAN: Yes.
KELLY: You've made bridges out of MetroCards.
MCKEAN: The car, you could actually hold in the palm of your hand. Though it's surprisingly heavy 'cause it's made out of layer upon layer upon layer of MetroCard. So...
KELLY: All glued together.
MCKEAN: ...It's like I'm a 3D printer and I just keep building it up.
KELLY: Do you have a favorite piece or pieces?
MCKEAN: I do. One of my favorite pieces - 'cause I'm doing a family history 'cause my family is from New York and has lived here for generations - it's a building which no longer exists, where my great-grandfather was invited for dinner. And I found an old photograph of it - just of the stoop. It was an odd, kind of arty photograph. And so this is the stoop he climbed up and crossed on his way to dinner, where he would soon meet the woman who would become his wife and thus my great-grandmother and thus ensure my arrival on the planet.
KELLY: Oh, that's a lovely story. How did you get the idea to do this? - to take a piece of what a lot of people would consider junk - they - you know, they use it up, they drop it on the floor of whatever subway station they're in. How did you get the idea, I could make this something beautiful?
MCKEAN: Yes. I was riding the subway about 25 years ago, and the MetroCard was still newish then, and they were trying to encourage people to use it and love it. And usually I have a book or the paper with me and I'd forgotten those. So I was just looking around, and there was a poster for the MetroCard. And I began idly wondering, how many words could I make out of the word MetroCard? And just by luck, I had a few of them at home, and I found some more on the subway floor 'cause people do like to litter. And I reinvented the MetroCard. So my initial collages were just the exact size of the MetroCard - around 3 by 2 inches. And I changed the words. You know, MetroCad (ph), MetroCroc (ph), Metro this, Metro that, Ocelot card.
KELLY: (Laughter).
MCKEAN: And then I got more adventurous and I changed the shape. And then I realized the material was gorgeous. You know, you don't realize - even New Yorkers - that they had different print runs for the MetroCard, so the yellow - the primary color - would vary from card to card, from a pale canary yellow to a sort of dark ochre. So there's more there than meets the eye at first blush. And that's - I just got going, and I had no clue when I began that I would be doing it 25 years later and still wondering what else I can do - finding new things to do with it.
KELLY: You must have gone through thousands and thousands...
MCKEAN: I always...
KELLY: ...Of MetroCards.
MCKEAN: I know. I always think I should find some very smart little child and have them count up the pieces in a - in one collage. 'Cause if I'm doing one with a blue sky behind, there are only a few little areas of the word MetroCard that I can cut out a blue rectangle. So it could take maybe 200 MetroCards to make a sky. And if I make the facade of building - 'cause I love just mundane New York buildings - around where it says MTA there's a little circle on the left - upper-left-hand part. There's two little rectangles of brown, and those are bricks. So each MetroCard gives me two bricks. So if I'm making a building that's, you know, 4 inches by 6 inches - a collage that big - that's a few hundred MetroCards right there.
KELLY: So what now? Do you have a stockpile to continue making your art from MetroCards now that they're no longer in production?
MCKEAN: I know. I've been in denial, but luckily, I do have a decent stash. I have boxes all around my apartment - some with the regular MetroCard and some - they had special edition ones as well, with different colors that I can add to the basic palette if I want to. So I think I have a few years' worth.
KELLY: Are you finding demand? People are interested now that suddenly this is a piece of New York that people are never going to be able to buy again?
MCKEAN: Yes, very much so, and it's really been kind of heartwarming and maybe bittersweet for me to realize how beloved this little piece of plastic was that - you know, I meet people from anywhere from Iowa to Ireland and they show me a MetroCard they have in their wallet that they kept from their first trip to New York or their parents' first trip to New York. And they never plan to part with it, even though I ask for them. So yes, people really - you know, the interest in my work has really skyrocketed lately.
KELLY: Have you ridden the subway yet in 2026, now that you're going to have to just tap your phone or swipe your Visa card?
MCKEAN: I did, and I felt like a traitor.
(LAUGHTER)
KELLY: I can imagine, yeah.
MCKEAN: 'Cause in December, I put I think about $100 - $95 on my MetroCard, thinking it would last me through December 31. But I guess I rode the subway more than I planned, and it ran out I think December 28. And so I had to break down, and I bought an OMNY card, and I hated every moment of it.
KELLY: No art to be found in OMNY cards.
MCKEAN: You know, I did make a collage out of the OMNY card 'cause I couldn't resist. I like a challenge. But it wasn't the same.
KELLY: MetroCard artist Thomas McKean, thank you so much.
MCKEAN: Thank you, Mary Louise. It was such an honor to talk with you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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