With a humble crayon, great art can happen. ICA LA partners with Crayon Collection—an organization that reclaims gently used crayons from restaurants and hotels and redirects them to schools and communities. ICA LA has invited artist Pearl C. Hsiung to share her innovative ideas for crayon creations, and will lead a drawing workshop inspired the by shapes and colors of the natural world. Free to the public—all ages welcome!

Pearl C. Hsiung explores states of physical and metaphysical transformation through her painting, installation, and video projects. Hsiung creates hallucinogenic landscapes where the geological and biological collide and metamorphose, and offers meditations on nature and the nature of images in an endlessly changing universe. Hsiung received her BA at the University of California, Los Angeles and her MFA at Goldsmiths College, London. She has had solo exhibitions at Visitor Welcome Center, Los Angeles; Human Resources, Los Angeles; and Vincent Price Art Museum, among others. In 2015, Hsiung was awarded a California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Arts grant as a Mid-Career Getty Fellow. She currently teaches painting and multi-media art to under-served and at-risk youth at Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA) in MacArthur Park.

The Crayon Collection model is simple but the impact is extraordinary: collect used crayons from restaurants and hotels and redistribute them to schools in need of art supplies. The organization successfully intervenes in a persistent cycle of waste and ensures that millions of crayons are saved from landfills annually. The crayons are then picked up by classrooms, and Crayon Collection provides the school with best-in-class resources to support art education. Through the simple act of saving a crayon, Crayon Collection seeks to reignite art programs in American schools, engage individuals and families to be stewards in their communities, and create a new model of local sustainability.