Inocente

15-year-old Inocente wants to run away and join the circus. Every morning when she wakes up, she paints colorful designs on her face and prays that her schoolmates don’t realize that she’s homeless. The only thing that surpasses her imaginative makeup are the huge canvases where she’s been documenting her dreams since she was 12 years old. ARTS: A Reason to Survive, a nonprofit organization that provides therapeutic arts programming to children and young adults dealing with homelessness, selected her for the program’s annual art show and gave her three months to produce 30 pieces, opening the door to a brighter future. Growing up on the streets of San Diego, Inocente and her family never spent more than three months in one place. Her father was deported and her mother tried to take her own life, but Inocente never let darkness into her heart. Instead, bright colors became her personal revolution and painting became the passport to a paint-splattered future, even if she still has no idea who Picasso and Dali are!