【www.jianqiaoenglish.com--英语阅读】
In New York City, blue and yellow MetroCards are as ubiquitous as pigeons and taxi cabs. For most people, the little pieces of plastic serve a single purpose: getting from here to there. But for artists like Stephen Shaheen, MetroCards are a creative material with an endless amount of possibilities. For a recent exhibit at Sloan Fine Art Gallery, Shaheen created Metrobench, a sturdy, usable bench made from 5,000 recycled MetroCards. Every year, the MTA prints more than 170 million MetroCards, but, for Shaheen, amassing just a couple thousand was no small feat.在纽约，黄绿色的地铁卡和鸽子、出租车一样无处不在。对于大多数人来说，这小小的塑料卡片只有一个用处，就是方便他们出行。但对于像Stephen Shaheen这样的艺术家来说，地铁卡可是神奇的材料，蕴含着无限可能性。最近在Sloan Fine Art Gallery艺术画廊，就有一张Stephen Shaheen用5000张回收地铁卡做成的结实、可用的椅子。每年，大纽约交通运输管理局（Metropolitan Transit Authority ）会印制1.7亿多张地铁交通卡，但对Stephen来说，积累几千张就够了。
Shaheen’s impetus for creating the bench was the call for submissions to “Single Fare 2: Please Swipe Again,” an art show of MetroCard-based art. Most artists submit works that use the cards as a miniature canvas for paintings, but Shaheen wanted to create a sculpture, in particular, a seating element. Soon after he came up with the bench idea, he realized that he would need several thousand MetroCards. After a few failed attempts at getting old cards from the MTA, Shaheen took to Craigslist. Within a week, he had amassed all the cards he needed.Shaheen设计这张椅子是为了参加一个名为“单程票2：请再刷一次”的地铁卡艺术设计展。这场设计展中，大多数的艺术家都会提交用地铁卡制成的微型画，但Shaheen希望能设计一个雕塑作品，尤其是一张椅子。有了这个点子后不久，他就意识到他会需要几千张的地铁卡。Shaheen曾试图去和大纽约交通运输管理局沟通，但是没有成功，于是他转向了Craigslist分类广告网站。不到一周，他就搜集到了需要的地铁卡。
Much like mass transit itself, the bench represents thousands of different journeys converging into a single moment. And while the MetroCard is a source of movement for people, Shaheen’s creation is a place of rest. Metrobench has a base made out of steel, but Shaheen designed it in such a way that it appears to be created solely from MetroCards. The tight layering of the cards creates a brilliant striped pattern, and, as Shaheen notes, the different shades of yellow resemble wood grain.这张地铁卡的椅子将数万段不同的旅程结合在一起，这一点很像地铁交通本身。但是地铁卡本身代表着人们的移动，而Shaheen的这个设计却代表着休息。这张椅子其实是钢架结构的，但在Shaheen的设计下，看起来好像仅仅是数万张地铁卡搭造起来的。卡片之间的层次很紧凑，于是看起来有了漂亮的条纹结构，另外，就像Shaheen说的，卡片上黄颜色的阴影看起来类似木质的纹理呢。
When creating the sculpture, Shaheen described his process on his blog. “It is essential, in my opinion, to create a design that integrates the colors, and in fact each unit, in a way that makes the whole something more than an appliqué of Metrocards on steel,” Shaheen wrote. “The new pattern has to have its own identity and has to contribute to a sense of new content in the assemblage. Shaheen把他设计这张椅子的过程都写在了博客上。“我认为，对一个设计来说，重要的是要将颜色及每个部分都融合起来，而不能看起来只是像在钢架椅子上铺满了地铁卡。”Shaheen写道,“新的设计必须要独特的特质，能在结合中看到有新的内容。”
Mission accomplished.任务完成了，Shaheen做的很棒。
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