“Atlas Spider”
Submitted by the Environmental Studies Class of 2008
Located in Maryland Hall; front hallway next to the bench on the left
hand side (right as you walk in building)
Eco-Spider Challenge Essay
The spider, weaver of webs, symbolizes the complex relationship between humans (the spider) and a human modified earth (the web as a life support system). We weave, or construct, our lives and landscapes, but must live with the modifications, intended or not, we create in the natural universe. John Muir, a conservationist, once said, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” This remains true on our increasingly modified planet where the choices we make can unsettle the balance of nature, a balance made increasingly tenuous by the threat of climate change. This Eco-Spider, known as Atlas Spider, parallels the Greek myth of Atlas, sentenced to hold the heavens on his shoulders for eternity. Here the spider holds the weighty world, a woven web of plastic on her shoulders, symbolizing our simultaneous impact on and accountability to the world. Here the spider is a steward who must recognize the interconnectedness between the weaving or her web and her survival.
Submitted by Environmental Studies Class of 2008 Eco-Spider Team
Kim Huson
Blake Ramsby
Mariela Rich
Claire Calise
Frankie Hazera
Jennifer Fitts
Naoum Tavantzis
Geoff Cox
Christine Wrublesky
Sam Pugsley
Kellen Seligman