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Miami Herald
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Miami Herald
ProjectArt builds community, empowers youth through exciting Miami exhibit
In a time when federal funding for the arts is facing cuts across the country, ProjectArt is hosting an important exhibit that is free and open to all. 'Told, Retold: The Pedagogy of Knowing and Becoming' showcases stunning pieces by five mentoring artists alongside works created by their students, ages 4-18. Many of the young artists are experiencing their first gallery moment. The exhibit is open until July 11 at Green Space Miami. 'A lot of these families have never stepped foot in a gallery, and now their children's artwork is adorning its walls,' said Adarsh Alphons, ProjectArt founder and executive director. 'They come dressed to the nines, and they point and talk to everyone. They show and tell their artwork to everyone who comes to the show, and it's just an easy way to build pride in children. ProjectArt's innovative model places teaching artists in public libraries and turns underutilized spaces into thriving community hubs. The five resident artists in the Miami exhibit are Jevon Brown, Agua Dulce, Ashley Castañeda, Isabella Garcia and Katherine (Neco) Kafruni. 'This is our first establishment of partnership, founded on a shared commitment to cultivating engagement and supporting Miami's local artists. Our collaboration with ProjectArt brings together artists, libraries, literary organizations and students of all ages,' said Kimberly Green, president of the Green Family Foundation. The award-winning nonprofit, started by Alphons in 2011, has empowered more than 13,000 youths and 350 artists nationwide through free arts education in public libraries. ProjectArt is one of many programs that received a letter of notice to withdraw funding, but the organization is committed to its mission of 'empowering youth, artists and communities through art.' Everyone is invited to the exhibit at 7200 Biscayne Blvd., noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday. More at and Cuban-American Luis Bergolla has welcomed travelers to Miami for more than 40 years. Sonesta Miami Airport HE'S GREETED TOURISTS FOR 40 YEARS When Luis Bergolla emigrated from Cuba in 1980, he never dreamed he'd find a job welcoming world travelers to his new home. Miami's working population is well known for its determination and sense of community, and Bergolla, now 64, is the embodiment of perseverance. He joined the staff at the property now named Sonesta Miami Airport as an airport shuttle driver. And what he originally thought would be a temporary decision evolved into more than four decades of serving the community. 'The constant influx of travelers from Miami International Airport and Port Miami would be stressful for any employee to manage on a day-to-day basis, but Luis considers this to be the best part of his day,' said Alex Alvarez, general manager at Sonesta Miami Airport. 'Throughout his tenure, he has both created long-lasting relationships with guests from all over the world and strengthened bonds with his coworkers, whom he considers family. Emigrating from what he knew as home with only a dream, he has not only contributed to Miami's rich sense of culture and community but encouraged travelers to do the same.' Bergolla has been there through all the property's identities, including a Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and now Sonesta. Through the changes he has been the one face to remain, warmly welcoming visitors after long days of travel. Bergolla is the longest tenured employee at the recently renovated hotel. 'In his 41 years on the property, he has amassed a wealth of industry knowledge, established connections with recurring guests and served as a friendly face for individuals traveling from Latin American countries with minimal English-speaking skills,' Alvarez said. More importantly, perhaps, is that in addition to creating his own American dream through hard work, he has inspired others to do the same in the constantly-evolving Miami. 'Sonesta Miami Airport feels like family,' Bergolla said. 'That's what makes coming to work so special.' CULINARY COURSE HELPS WOMEN ACHIEVE Congratulations to seven women who are celebrating completing their culinary skills training program, a collaboration between CareerSource South Florida and the Agape Network. The transformative course is designed to empower women facing challenges such as substance abuse or poverty through a holistic approach to help them 'rebuild their lives, develop new skills and enter the workforce with a fresh sense of purpose.' 'This program has been life-changing for these women,' said Rick Beasley, executive director of CareerSource South Florida. 'Many of these women are mothers, juggling the responsibilities of caregiving while working hard to improve their mental health. This key intervention has not only opened doors to new opportunities but has also brought about a dramatic shift in their lives for the better.' The graduation ceremony at Agape marked another successful completion of the regionally recognized eight-week culinary training course. Upon graduation, CareerSource South Florida stepped in to connect the women with local employers. Five of the graduates had secured employment offers even before receiving their diplomas, giving them the security of earning a degree and beginning a new job at the same time. 'I encourage other women struggling with substance abuse to reach out to Agape and explore their options,' said one program participant. 'For me, overcoming mental health challenges was the first step toward wanting to get an education. Both were about seeking help, advocating for yourself and being determined. Through this program, I've found a new career and a renewed sense of purpose.' Learn more at and Write to ChristinaMMayo@ with news for this column.
Time Magazine
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
Why This Artist Isn't Afraid of AI's Role in the Future of Art
As AI enters the workforce and seeps into all facets of our lives at unprecedented speed, we're told by leaders across industries that if you're not using it, you're falling behind. Yet when AI's use in art enters the conversation, some retreat in discomfort, shunning it as an affront to the very essence of art. This ongoing debate continues to create disruptions among artists. AI is fundamentally changing the creative process, and its purpose, significance, and influence are subjective to one's own values—making its trajectory hard to predict, and even harder to confront. Miami-based Panamanian photographer Dahlia Dreszer stands out as an optimist and believer in AI's powers. She likens AI's use in art to the act of painting or drawing—simply another medium that can unlock creative potential and an artistic vision that may have never been realized without it. Using generative AI models like Stable Diffusion, 3.5, Midjourney, Adobe, Firefly, and Nova, Dreszer trained an AI image generator on her style for over a year, instructing it to produce artwork with her sensibilities, with one piece in her current exhibition produced entirely by AI. Entitled 'Bringing the Outside In,' Dreszer calls the show a 'living organism.' (It is on display until May 17, 2025 at Green Space Miami.) Her vivid, maximalist still lifes depict layered familial heirlooms, Judaica, flowers, and textiles made by Panamanian indigenous women. Attendees can interact with an AI image generator in the exhibition to produce their own artworks in Dreszer's style, telling the machine in a sentence or two what they want it to produce, and in seconds, an artwork is created. Also as part of the show, Dreszer programmed an AI-generated clone of herself, which looks and speaks like her, to guide visitors via video chat through the space. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity. TIME: Take me back to the first moment you realized AI could enhance your art. What about AI drew you in? What did you feel? Dreszer: I believe technology is here to supercharge us. When generative AI entered the mainstream, I knew I wanted to get my hands dirty right away. I was already in the world of NFTs, but this was a different conversation. It took over a year of experimentation and dialogue with image generators to feel comfortable finally creating a piece to include in a body of work. This exhibition includes one piece I made in collaboration with AI. I personalized an AI image model on what the exhibition means, feels like, and looks like, feeding it images embodying my style. I included the Florida Everglades in the foreground, reflecting the landscape where I'm living today. I'm not only interested in AI and art, but also in adding nature to that conversation. I've hung flowers on top of this piece that fall onto the frame or the ground when they die, allowing nature to do its thing. I have not intervened physically. I believe nature, art and technology can coexist nicely. I actually thought that all the pieces in your exhibition were produced by AI. That's also the intention, right, because they are not. I'm always trying to play with the viewers, to disorient, because everything is not what you see at first glance. There's no artificial enhancements in most of these works, but just the fact that you think there are—I find that narrative interesting. What inspired you to create a clone for this exhibition? My clone is so fun. I'm trying to pose questions to the community as they engage with these works: Moving forward, what does it mean for relationships when we're speaking to a machine as if it was a human, and we cannot know the difference? What is our role as humans if we have clones that can mimic what we do? I want to see how that dialogue evolves. There's a practicality as well. The clone guides you through the show, probably better than I can. It's trained on what I know, but as a machine, it's supercharged. Why did you include your clone? I wanted to have an AI version of myself to guide viewers and answer questions, to educate others in order to demystify AI. Through the clone, I can humanize the technology, 'the art of the possible,' of incorporating technology into artistic workflows. Will you keep your clone after the exhibition? Will you educate it about other parts of yourself? I'm very interested in continuing the relationship with her. I'm working through ideas and ways to train her. I haven't shared it yet, but there are different personas of the clone. I'll be fine tuning and creating different versions based on the relationship I want her to have with the audience she's engaging with. Some critics would call the use of AI in art 'cheating.' What do you say to those critics? I'd love to have a conversation to understand how that opinion was formed. I'd encourage them to see it as a collaboration. Many people don't understand the process and the time it takes. I would invite critics to dive deeper, and think about it not just as: 'I put in a prompt, it makes art, then I'm done.' It's a long this relationship between technology and the arts is not new. We've had disruptions in art through technology before. This is just more aggressive, intrusive, and rapid in its speed and pace of innovation. What specific challenges have you faced so far using AI in your art? Oftentimes the outputs are not what I wanted. As an artist, I have high expectations. I like to control the visualization so it's highly stylized, curated, and composed. With AI, that control goes away, because AI has its own intelligence and creativity, no matter how good the prompt is. It's a hard and frustrating yet also enlightening process; it may not create what you wanted, but it can make something you didn't know you wanted. Then there's technical things it doesn't know how to do, but eventually will. It's not great with certain renders or visualizations. What scares and excites you about where AI is headed for the next generation of artists? I'm mostly excited because of the rapid pace. Updates to generative AI software happen in a matter of weeks. There's also a healthy competition in the market, which means that as users, our needs are being satisfied quicker than ever. Our feedback is being incorporated and the tools are changing. You asked about fears. AI is entering our workflows and industries in one way or another. Will we accept it? Deny it? Who will fall behind, and who will be at the forefront? I'm more excited than fearful, but I see why others may be fearful. It disrupts our workflows, and if we're not ready to change or learn new skills, it can be scary. Will collaboration with AI replace collaboration between artists? No, no, no. There are many examples of how me and several artists have collaborated with AI. One artist came to me with her artistic vision and her words, and I used my prompt engineering skills and knowledge of AI systems, and together, we created an AI piece that was her vision come to life—this beautiful red textile tree that had a huge trunk. As an artist, there is a journey one goes through when creating. When you use AI, does it still allow you to access this other-worldly experience of the creative process? There's definitely parts of the creative process that AI is not inclusive of. So for example, when I'm making AI art, I'm not painting, or getting my hands dirty. There's physicalities that are not included in that journey. But I think that's similar to any medium. So let's say I'm choosing to use my camera as my tool and not a paint brush. There's also experiences that are missed out through my photographic artistic process, that if I were using a paintbrush or another tool, would be a different journey. So that's why I see generative AI art as its own medium, and each medium comes with its own journeys and processes that are exclusive to that medium, right? Do you see the term 'post-human' as an accurate way to reflect this era we are entering in art? I would divert a bit from 'post-human.' I see AI more as a booster, not a replacer, but an accelerator and an enabler. So, if 'post-human' means it's a replacement, then I would lean in more to the perspective of AI as a turbo supercharger that us humans can carry with us to bolt forward. I think it could replace mundane tasks that we may not want to do. And that's where the beauty of the collaboration comes in, where we give it these tasks so our human brains reach our fullest potential, because then the low value tasks we can outsource into generative AI. How do you think historians will look back on this particular era of rapid expansion with AI? We are in the foundation era. Everyone knows what ChatGPT is. We've passed the point of inflection, and now we're at a point where industries, individuals, businesses, and creatives are finding their place in AI. How are we adapting–or not–to it? Time is of the essence. What we decide to do now, literally today, versus in a week or two, or three, or in a month, will define the next five to 10 years.
CBS News
14-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Miami transforms into a poetic playground with O, Miami's April events
Every April, O, Miami weaves poetry into the fabric of Miami-Dade County, turning streets, walls and public spaces into a vibrant canvas of words through dozens of events and projects. With a mission to share a poem with every resident, the organization celebrates the city's diverse voices, from immigrant students to local poetry fans, in a monthlong festival that runs through April 30. "The goal is to reach every single resident of Miami-Dade County with a poem," explained Melody Santiago Cummings, co-executive producer of O, Miami. "We do that by having poems put up as public art, doing a series of workshops, and celebrating Miami through the power of poetry." Over 40 public events and projects are happening all over the city, celebrating Miami and all of its unique characters. This year they're rolling out something unique called "Soy de Todas Partes" ("I am of all places") outside Greenspace Miami. These poems, written by immigrant students, are displayed right where you can see them – on streets, walls, anywhere and everywhere. "Year-round we're working with students in schools, and so many of those students share [in] the majority minority community that we're in," says Caroline Cabrera, co-executive producer. "At Green Space Miami we have four poems up, but our aim is to reach 100 poems in public space." These installations span the entire county, with one of the newest appearing at the North Beach Bandshell in Miami Beach. "There is no doubt that poetry is a powerful tool and a catalyst for empathy and understanding, so we're publishing work in multiple languages," Cabrera adds. Local residents enthusiastically celebrate all that O, Miami has to offer. "I feel like Miami really is the most poetic city in the world, just as Miami says all the time, and I feel like we're standing here in the poetry," shares Troy Angles, a poetry fan. "And I think that being in a city where we have so many people from so many different cultures, being able to express that through poetry is amazing." Peter Cole, an O, Miami fan, notes, "It's just a great way to meet people from all over the city. As you can see from all these poems around us, everyone has just an interesting experience here, and it's a great way to get to know people." Yeimi Valdes, another poetry lover, explains, "O Miami's programming does such an incredible job at connecting us to the joy of expression, to the ways that poetry gives us a sense of community, and does it in a way that feels fun, accessible, like there's a poet inside each and every one of us." And finally, as part of O, Miami's street team initiatives, don't be alarmed if you find what looks like a parking ticket on your windshield – it's actually a poem! So if you come out to your car and spot a citation, don't worry. It's all in good feelings. The O, Miami program runs through April 30th throughout Miami. For more information:
