In Houston’s Northside neighborhood – and traveling around in a converted school bus that now serves as a mobile art studio and classroom – Veronica “Roni” Cabrera-Moreno is doing just that. Her big dream of serving the community through art is now coming true, thanks to a lot of hard work and a $100,000 grant via the Kelly Clarkson show.
Roni wasn’t one of those kids who always knew she was an artist. In fact, she says she got in trouble with the babysitter when she was little for not coloring inside the lines. She began channeling her creativity into practical projects with an aunt who made quilts, but it wasn’t until she was 12 that others began to recognize her drawing and painting abilities.
“I was drawing something in honor of my dad, who had passed away, and this kid in class was like, ‘Wow, that’s really cool. Can you draw something for me, too?’ and it went from there,” she said.
Roni’s talent landed her a spot in Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where she attended her freshman year. The following year, she transferred to Davis (now called Northside) High School, which serves the neighborhood where Roni grew up. At 16, however, she became pregnant and transferred to a school for pregnant girls.
After her son was born, she briefly attended another school which would have enabled her to accelerate her graduation, but found it too hard to travel via bus with her baby, so she dropped out and studied to earn her GED while continuing to grow a family with her now-husband Norberto.
When Roni’s third son was two months old, her husband fell 37 feet while working at an oil refinery, broke his back, and ended up out of work for five years. The young mother stepped up to the plate and took on the family’s breadwinner role while Norberto was recovering from his injury. She found work in refineries building scaffolding. Her passion for art was still alive, however.
“The funny thing is that, even while I was working at the refinery, I found myself decorating hardhats and making art out of what the welders would drop!” she said with a laugh.
Once Norberto went back to work, Roni dove back into being a full-time mom. She became involved with her kids’ school, joining the PTO and volunteering to help wherever she could. It didn’t take long for others to see how she could best contribute.
“My kids went to Garcia Elementary; their logo is an alligator, so I would make all the signs, painting alligators. Then my older kids started volunteering me for everything. ‘Oh, my mom can draw you that. Oh, my mom can paint you that. Oh, my mom can make you that. Oh, my mom can decorate the hallways!’ So that’s what I did for a few years,” she said.
Eventually, the PTO president asked Roni to do face painting for the school festival. People began asking her for her phone number, and suddenly she found herself in business as a professional face painter.
“I worked for the zoo and for various entertainers; I began doing body painting and all kinds of stuff. I think that was the moment when I realized, ‘Oh yeah, this is who I am. This is who I put aside to raise my kids. This is who I really am.’ From there, I went from face painting to canvas to art to murals … it just kind of blew up on me!” Roni explained.
Meanwhile, she was still doing things with her kids and the other families’ kids. “I started having this idea of, ‘I wish I could set up a tent and do art in the community.’ And I did! I set up tents and had art supplies all laid out there. My church would donate supplies like paper plates or bottles or tissue paper holders, and moms would collect things for me so I could do art with the kids.”
Seeing what Roni was doing for the neighborhood kids inspired the owner of Tequila’s restaurant to jump in with her, offering free lunch tickets to kids who came to paint.
“It was really interesting because parents would look at me and ask, ‘What do you want from me?’ They couldn’t believe I was doing this for free,” she said. “Everyone was so happy, and I realized I really had something here; it was something I really enjoyed doing.”
Art, kids, and community became a central theme of Roni’s life. She was hired to do art activities for a community development center, she began managing the arts and entertainment for the Northside Festival, and she worked at Vineyard Church as its nursery director, hoping to become its children’s pastor. Simultaneously, she was working for Art in the Boulevard, a local art studio.
“Around then a light bulb went off. I was really torn between working for my church and running these camps and classes at the art studio. I realized this demographic (served by Art in the Boulevard) could afford those camps and classes, but people in other places couldn’t,” she explained.
“I was doing a project at church about Jonah and realized my neighborhood was my Nineveh. I knew I could enjoy working over in the nicer neighborhood and making good money – it would be easier – but I really needed to be here, serving the people in my neighborhood.”
It wasn’t long until Roni’s mission began to crystalize. “I dream a lot. At some point in my dreams, I was like ‘I want to live in a bus and travel around the U.S. Oh, and I want to get a bus and turn it into a studio!’ and my husband told me, ‘No, honey, you can’t; I’m not a diesel mechanic!’”
Roni was not dissuaded, however. One day, not long after the pandemic hit, she and her husband were driving down a back street in their neighborhood and noticed two buses for sale parked at someone’s house. Norberto looked at her and said, “Okay, I think we’re ready for your bus.”
The next morning, they went to look at the bus, and it wasn’t running. Through several connections, they found a mechanic who told Roni he would fix the bus if she bought it. Two weeks later, the day they were to pick up the repaired school bus, they went outside and found their car had been stolen. Undeterred, they took an Uber to pick up the bus, and her husband, who had been watching YouTube videos about how to drive a bus, drove it home. Within days, her four sons began helping to pull out the bus seats. A middle school friend set up a GoFundMe page to help fund the project, and people donated supplies. Within a matter of weeks, the Art Bus was born.
The launch of The Art Bus was reminiscent of Roni’s past community events, reflecting her heart for the Northside neighborhood. A food crisis brought on by the pandemic prompted Roni’s friend Monica from The Christina Project to do a food drive, and she asked Roni to bring the Art Bus. Together, they went to Mi Tienda (the Spanish H-E-B), loaded the bus up to the ceiling in food, and drove it over to the local preschool Avance, where food was then distributed to needy families.
A month later, another person called and asked if the Art Bus could be used to distribute backpacks at a local apartment complex. She loaded the bus with art supplies, lollipops and backpacks, and her husband came along to make balloon animals for the kids. The event went off without a hitch.
“I feel like God sent me this individual to show me we could just go do something without extensive planning. All you have to do is just do it!” Roni exclaimed.
A year after using the Art Bus to serve various neighborhoods around Houston, Roni began to think about how best to serve her own area of town. She found a building on Jensen Drive that was ideal, but without help, it was too much for her.
As she was working out an arrangement with the building owner, a producer from The Kelly Clarkson Show contacted Roni via her social media pages. She had heard about Roni via a news story on Channel 2 and wanted to pitch the idea to Kelly, who is a Texas native. She asked Roni to make a little video, and within a few weeks, she got a call saying the team was coming to film her three days later.
“They filmed at my house, at my church where I used to work, in front of my mural,” Roni expounded. “This was on a Thursday, and they told me they wanted to fly me out to LA on Monday!”
Little did Roni know, when she arrived in Los Angeles, she and her family were there for the filming of the annual Kelly Clarkson Christmas show and her business, HTXArt (which includes the Art Bus as well as Roni’s face painting and other art ventures), would be awarded a $100,000 grant by Kelly Clarkson, Amy Pohler, and H-E-B. It was just what she needed to fund Art in the HEART, an art center in the heart of a needy neighborhood, which opened on Jensen Drive on May 28.
Showing us around the Art Bus, which is parked outside the brightly colored Art in the HEART building, Roni is still amazed by how everything has come together. “When I look back, it’s easy to see God’s hand in all of this. I was mourning over not being able to be the (children’s) pastor at my church, but then someone told me, ‘Wow, you get to be the pastor to the kids of the city!’”
For more information on Roni, visit www.htxart.org or follow her on Instagram @htxartroni.
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