Transforming

Contained within one image, the circle and cross represent fragility and power: humans transforming the global environment.

The ship is a metaphor for change and transformation. For ancient Egyptians, a model ship within a tomb symbolized the final voyage of the human spirit. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a ship is a stage for the drama of a personal transformation.

In the poem, a mariner kills an albatross. For punishment he is made to wear the bird around his neck like a cross. He is transformed, perhaps by guilt, to love the albatross that he once feared had led the ship astray.