Artist Maria de Los Ángeles documents the personal, psychological, and emotional experience of being an immigrant. Having crossed the border dividing Mexico and the United States with her five siblings when she was just 11 years old, de Los Ángeles has spent most of her life in the United States. Her undocumented status was never a concern until she had to apply for college—being an undocumented immigrant made her ineligible to receive scholarship. That all changed under the California Dream Act. The law enabled her to attend Pratt Institute under the condition that she match a $20,000 scholarship. De Los Ángeles spent that following summer working hard to sell her artwork, and with the support of the Santa Rosa community, was able to raise the funds necessary to move to New York. Since then, de Los Ángeles has received her MFA from Yale and has founded One City Arts, a two-week program providing art lessons to the Santa Rosa community. As a DACA recipient, de Los Ángeles has been able to work and teach as a visiting professor at Pratt Insitute. With the looming threat of DACA's repeal, the complexities of identity, anxiety, and the overriding beauty in de Los Ángeles's work are all the more salient to understand and empathize with.



















