When we explore nature through art, it makes a lasting imprint on our minds. It also awakens our imaginations to nature’s lifesaving wonders. Through observing, learning, and creating, we come to better understand our environment. More aware, we can make others aware through art.
This is the goal of an ambitious program dedicated to environmental stewardship conceived by Dr. Richard Mackrell, Asst. Director of STEM & Innovative Practices at Luzerne Intermediate Unit #18 in Kingston. It has been put into practice by a talented team of artists and environmentalists, along with the talented students of Pittston Area Middle School and Heights-Murray Elementary School in Wilkes-Barre, both located in Environmental Justice Areas, zones where pollution places an unfair burden on inhabitants.
This program, “Engaging School Communities in Environmental Stewardship through the Visual Arts,” financed and supported by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, was launched in January of this year and ended with an exhibit of students’ work at Fine Arts Fiesta in Wilkes-Barre in May 2026.
In between the students had the opportunity to work with “Bob and the Gang,” Robert E. Hughes and other members of Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition of Abandoned Mine Reclamation (EPCAMR), a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing health risks around abandoned mine lands while finding ways to put them to productive use.
Hal Gonzalez of Heights-Murray Elemtary School showing his painting at Fine Arts Fiesta in Wilkes-Barre in May. (SUBMITTED)
Hughes taught students about the history of coal mining, the hard life of miners, and the devastation left behind. His most important lesson: reclamation does not erase damage. It seeks to stabilize and find new uses for land and waste.
Students also met with education specialists from the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, who spoke to them of the essential role of wetlands in preserving all forms of life on Earth — including ours. They also brought samples of macroinvertebrates, small aquatic organisms such as snails, dragon flies and crayfish that live on riverbeds and serve as key indicators of water quality.
Then the artists stepped in, four artist-teachers from the Armature, a center for the arts in Archbald, providing school and community-based programs in dance, music, writing and the visual arts. These four artists, Mark Ciocca, Stephanie Colarusso, Leigh Pawling, and Gina Rice, actively encouraged students to turn history, nature, environmental science, reclamation, and chemistry into art.
Let’s begin with reclamation and chemistry. Take some iron oxide sourced from mine runoff in the Pittston area. Mix it with nails and vinegar, let the mixture sit for several hours. Filter and drain, simmer, then dry it in an oven. Grind and store it in airtight jars and you’ll get pigments ranging from yellow to red to brown to black. Since the earliest cave paintings known to humankind, this is how artists have been doing it.
With the help of their teachers, this is how the student-artists in Pittston and Wilkes-Barre did it too, and they used their iron-oxide pigment not only as paint but as fabric dye in a “soft sculpture” project that tells the story of coal miners. Working full-scale, students first drew patterns corresponding to tools and supplies used in the mines. They also created a breaker boy, a child their age, who started work at about the same age they started school.
Once they cut out the patterns, students placed them on fabric they’d dyed with iron oxide, obtaining a rusty earthtone, a color inseparable from life in and around the mines. They cut, sewed, stuffed, and then stitched the last edges to create three-dimensional soft sculptures of hard objects such as pickaxes, turned pliable, vulnerable to harm, like the men who used them underground. In another sculpture, the enlarged photo of a breaker boy’s head sits atop a body wrapped in fabric that, like a straitjacket, imprisons him, robbing him of childhood.
Reclamation can also mean recycling. Nails, scrap metal, bits of coal, the very materials that mirror the pollutants found in contaminated waterways, can be used to make beautiful mosaics of aquatic life. Creating mosaics of macroinvertebrates, students came to better understand these creatures and their crucial role in wetland ecosystems. As a support, they used panels of different varieties of wood, dying them, once again, in a mixture of iron oxide, noting how each variety reacts. This is also a lesson in how mine drainage, often containing large quantities of iron oxide, can pollute the environment.
As “Bob and the Gang” told students, “What harms an ecosystem can also tell its story.”
A collaborative work by the students of Pittston Middle School, showing how coal mining, history and the environment interact. (SUBMITTED)
Certain ecosystems, such as the wetlands of Nescopeck State Park in Luzerne County, tell another story: how nature, aided by dedicated environmentalists, can repair past damage and contribute to stabilizing a contaminated environment. Students learned about the Nescopeck Creek and Watershed, once ecological disaster areas, and the variety of life they support today. Inspired by this story, they recreated this natural world in an explosion of bold colors and forms.
This challenging environmental stewardship program asked a lot of students. It demanded knowledge of chemistry, history, and environmental science. Approaching all three through art, students responded enthusiastically, as their work demonstrates. The program also illustrates that art can create young environmental stewards who return to their communities as guides.