Artwork to Aid Rain Forest

An exhibition of artwork by children from around the world will run from Tuesday to May 22 at Every Picture Tells a Story gallery in Hollywood. The exhibition features selected works from “Sebastian’s Little Green Creative Arts Collaboration,” an arts contest promoting Earth awareness, created in 1990 by Sebastian International. Top prize in the contest each year is a trip to the Brazilian rain forest.

“These are our future social activists, the kids we don’t have to worry about,” said company president and founder John Sebastian. “They feel they have a commitment to the environment as well as to life. If you have nothing to lose, then you will do all the things you read about--the killings, the carjackings. If you have a lot to lose, that leads to respecting the environment. . . . It’s difficult to do harm to mankind because you understand the value of life.”

The Little Green program was an outgrowth of his company’s early recycling efforts, according to Sebastian. He evolved a program for schoolchildren that would let them “express in their own way how they see their world today.”

Response from “every part of the world--Latin America, Central America, Japan, Europe, Canada”--was “the most gratifying thing you’ve ever seen,” Sebastian said. “The students all have a keen awareness of their lives. They know exactly what the world is like, and they want somebody to say, ‘This is what you do and you can fix it.’ ”

“Our gallery is precisely about breaking down borders between the adult world and the child’s world, between different cultures and between art and science,” said Abbie Phillips, owner of Every Picture Tells a Story. “These beautiful paintings speak to us in a very direct way about how we should view our Earth.”

School groups from throughout the city will tour the gallery during the exhibition to learn about the book-making process and about the rain forest, “tying together literacy and the environment,” according to Phillips.

Sebastian, whose company makes hair-care products and cosmetics, said his business has increased its ecological awareness even further by doing away with products with dyes, “because once you flush ‘em down the drain they are harmful to plant and fish life. There are alternatives to all that.

“I think our function now is beyond ecology,” he added. “It’s involving people and their future life and behavior. . . . What we’re looking for is a life of more freedom with more responsibility. You can only do that by being responsible as a business for your community and involving your employees, so it’s not a job but a way of life.”

Where does the North African-born, Italian entrepreneur come by his altruistic spirit?

He and his family “landed in New York in 1954 with $200 and nothing else. I think we were some of the lucky ones that survived. . . . Maybe we feel we have more to pay back.”

Net proceeds from the sale of artwork from the exhibition will go to the Rainforest Foundation.

* Every Picture Tells a Story, 836 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood, Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; (213) 962-5420.