Nicole Martinez is an arts journalist and the deputy director of Fountainhead Arts in Miami. She is a winner of a 2025 Rabkin Prize, and you can read her full bio on our website.

We invited Nicole to have a conversation about her work. The interview is accompanied by a newly commissioned portrait of Nicole in her home office in Miami.

The interview has been gently edited for length and clarity.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

* Ballet Etudes

* “Trump’s Former Pal Plans To Beat Tariffs And The Immigration Crackdown” by Giacomo Tognini (Forbes, June 2025)

* Carolina Drake

* Artburst Miami

* Fountainhead Arts

* The Yearbook: 2024, An Annual Survey of Fountainhead Residency Artists by various writers (Fountainhead Arts, 2024)

* Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates

* Otter.ai app

* Laurie Simmons’ Instagram account

* “With the help of fellow Floridians and artificial intelligence, a Miami artist imagines a climate-resilient future for his city” by Nicole Martinez (The Art Newspaper, August 2022)

* Ragnar Kjartansson’s solo show Las cosas que ves al momento de caer el telón, (The Things You See Before the Curtain Hits the Floor), Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, 2023.

* Ragnar Kjartansson, God

* Ragnar Kjartansson, The Visitors

* Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)

* RUNIK by Petrit Halilaj, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2023-2024)

* Art on my mind by bell hooks

* Mother Reader: Essential Writings on Motherhood, edited by Moyra Davey (Seven Stories Press, 2001)

This episode of the Rabkin Interviews was produced by the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation based in Portland, Maine. The interview was conducted by Mary Louise Schumacher, a journalist and the executive director of the Rabkin Foundation. The portraits were made by artist-photographer Kevin J. Miyazaki. The production team for the Rabkin Interviews also includes Cindy Eggert Johnson, producer; Johnathon Olsen, editor; with research and copyediting by Katie Avila Loughmiller and Karen Samelson. Music is by Flint, HaHaHa, Just for Kicks, and Curtis Cole. The Rabkin Prize is awarded through a nomination process, and an independent jury selects the winners.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit rabkinfoundation.substack.com