Midcoast artists are grappling with the uncertainty of the present as the environmental crisis escalates.

Mary McKone, a ceramic artist in Georgetown, and Jöel Levasseur, a multimedia artist in Damariscotta, wonder how art should address climate change. In their current exhibitions, they show that hope, while it may be around the corner, is not yet grasped. 

McKone’s new exhibition, “Come to the Table,” and her ongoing Maine Endangered Species Series emphasize that saving the planet is not just up for political debate but creative banter, too. 

Similarly, LeVasseur’s latest fixation with mark-making points to the dooming reality that art cannot save us.

“We can only save ourselves,” he said. “And I’m afraid the chance is fleeting.” 

Mary McKone decorates a glazed ceramic with a fern decal to show how her artistic process works. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

McKone Pottery

Starting her career as a production potter at Christian Ridge Pottery in South Paris, McKone couldn’t have imagined that 30 years later, she would return from the Middle East to establish her own studio.

After meeting her husband, she moved to Israeli-occupied Palestine and worked as an art instructor at the Friends Girls’ School in Ramallah until 1996. She then relocated to Lagos, Nigeria, to share a space at Ruth Omabegho’s art studio on Ikoyi Island. In 2016, McKone returned to Georgetown after teaching the International Baccalaureate in Visual Arts at the American Community School in Beirut.

“We chose to retire in Maine because Lebanon had become a callous place to live,” McKone said. “The economy was crumbling, and my mother-in-law needed reliable health care in old age. We loved living in the Middle East, but it was a lot — we couldn’t trust the electricity, water or food.” 

There were times living in the West Bank when the Israelis would shut off the water system to Ramallah, McKone said, leaving thousands without access to water. Returning to Maine, she said she was stressed to find out about the spread of PFAS chemicals — the familiarity of the situation triggered her. 

“Many people don’t realize how precious access to clean water is,” McKone said. “Until it’s gone. Seeing these environmental problems stateside is scary, but it inspired my work. We need to face these harsh realities.” 

‘Come to the Table’

McKone’s latest exhibition, “Come to the Table,” is on the lookout for a new home. 

The collection explores unresolved environmental concerns. Each ceramic addresses a different issue, from nanoplastics, wildfires, PFAS, pollinator decline and corn sweat to commercial agriculture and food waste.

“Food waste emits over 8% of global carbon emission,” McKone said. “That’s more than the airline industry. Greenhouse gases perpetuate global warming, prompting wildfires and floods. The more our environment is abused, the more it will abuse us.” 

Some of her ideas were inspired by research. For example, McKone read an article from NPR that taught her that air pollution from corn cultivation has been linked to 4,300 premature deaths yearly, which inspired the ceramic plate with corn husk decals. 

Others were merely intuitive. Roused by the devastation in the Middle East, McKone said she began to examine the impact of war on the environment. She created two additional works of art that focused on the weaponization of food.

“We need to ban one of humanity’s most shameful weapons of war: the disruption of critical food supplies through the looting and destruction of farms,” she said. “While the brutalities abroad aren’t happening on our front doorsteps, we should be aware of its enduring impact; we all share the same food system.” 

One ceramic piece features a dinner pot inspired by photos of children in Sudan and Gaza holding empty dishes, while the other depicts a cabbage plant acknowledging the 2006 Lebanon war, when cluster bombs were dropped in fields, causing farmers to lose limbs from explosives.

According to Mary McKone, the most common ceramic in her Maine Endangered Species Series features the sea plover, which is in critical risk due to widespread dune erosion across Maine’s beaches. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

Maine Endangered Species Series 

Rolling up her sleeves, McKone boils some water and pulls out a dictionary from the 1900s found on the side of the road in Lebanon. The pages feature sketches of plants, such as ferns and butterfly moss, which she adjusts in Photoshop and then prints on decal paper.

“I wasn’t planning to keep working post-retirement,” McKone said. “But I attended a workshop at the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, and the artist used graphics to make pottery. It inspired me to start my decal series — the oyster and endangered species collections — which I’ve continued ever since.” 

The decals don’t sit atop the glaze; when fired in the kiln, they become part of the ceramic. 

McKone’s Maine Endangered Species Series uses prints by local illustrator Jackie Johnson. As former art teachers, both women wanted to add an educational component. Each ceramic has a notecard outlining threats to each creature — great blue heron, wood frog, sand plover — and ways individuals can support the species. 

In 2019, McKone teamed up with the Kennebec Estuary Land Trust; to this day, 10% of proceeds support local wildlife habitat conservation.

Joël LeVasseur collects seaweed and bee carcasses to study the shape and structure they take when removed from their natural habitats. The bees were found dead after a barn infestation last spring. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

Joël Levasseaur mark-making

Joël LeVasseur, an Acadian environmental artist, holds a master’s from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. After completing formal education, he attended the Maine College of Art & Design, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. 

Using materials found scavenging Maine’s beaches, state parks and highways, LeVasseur doesn’t just make art about pollution — he makes art out of it. 

“My work focuses on the impact of human development in rural areas,” LeVaseseur said. “I’ve recently been drawn to landscape painting, a detour from my earlier abstract work. Through mark-making, my intent is to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors and listen to what the land has to say. The dark color tones serve as a point of reflection, asking viewers to reflect on their behavior.” 

The trails we leave

“There’s not much public land left in the Pemaquid peninsula,” LeVasseur said. “It’s almost all private. I placed a grid over this painting to show how segmented the space has become.” 

Joël LeVasseur, of Damariscotta, in the garden outside his private art studio. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

In his art barn beyond the vegetable garden, LeVasseur exhibits two recent works: Bell 47 Over Searsmont and Wabanaki Trails. Hanging next to each other, he said the juxtaposition is meant to spark a conversation about how tourism has tainted the landscape. 

In 2003, LeVasseur charted a Bell 47 helicopter to view Midcoast Maine’s 225-square-mile watershed. He documented what he saw as scars etched across a tortured George River Valley. Concerned, he turned to topographical maps and satellite images for proof that the land he barely recognized had, indeed, been altered.

“Growing up in Aroostook County, there was an abundance of nature,” LeVasseur said. “It’s always been a part of my soul. It feels selfish, but I am heartbroken that I can’t paint the world I once loved as a child. I’m fighting to return to something that was and will never be, and that frustration is captured in the art.”

LeVasseur’s latest work reflects his interest in rope found in mud flats near the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. He noted that although rope is a primordial technology, it has become an essential tool for modern fishing, and its impact, when left behind, is long-lasting. 

According to Egyptian mythology, the rope was an umbilical cord connecting the earthly and spiritual realms; it was viewed as a tool the divine used to pull humans into heaven. Intrigued by its symbolism and the form rope took in mark-making, LeVasseur set out to integrate it into his work.

Joël LeVasseur with a 2011 work. Popham Beach monoprint on Arches paper, 30 feet-by-14 inches. Laura Sitterly / The Times Record

In 2011, he created a 30-foot-long mono print on Arches paper featuring rope found on Popham Beach. In Bell 47 Over Searsmont and Wabanaki Trails, he added fictitious trails to show the difference between Colonial trails, which were more harsh and impactful, compared to Indigenous ones. 

“My work mourns the ongoing loss of trees and farms,” LeVasseur said. “In the Midcoast, I am moved by the changing landscape, which is a result of the growing tourism industry. The marks and blurred symbols in my work represent the traces we leave behind, whether rope or grids or farms stripped of vegetation in lead-mining towns like Gilman, Colorado.” 

In July 2015, LeVasseur created a monoprint, “Time: Wounded Trees,” inspired by his visit to Gilman after the EPA closed the mining town in 1984 due to the prodigious amounts of contamination dumped into the gorge’s ground and river. 

Moving forward, he said he hopes to create his largest scroll — 50 feet or longer — since he has found that nowadays, to get people’s attention, artistic efforts have to be more evocative.  

“The clock is ticking,” LeVasseur said. “I hope the concerned mood in my work inspired the viewer to act, because we need to change course.”