Audio By Carbonatix
“Where my money? I need, I need, I need cash!”Maybe Rick Ross wasn’t singing about the everyday grind of paying bills. But there once was a young Rick Ross, who struggled to find a way to balance his creative ambitions and cash flow. In “Everyday Hustlin’,” we talk with Miami artists about their day jobs.
David Tamargo is a Cuban-American visual artist working in Miami whose artwork serves as a visual journey into situational fantasy. Using landscapes to focus on the formation of identity, Tamargo works in various mediums such as photography, installation, sculpture, performance, and video. He curates and exhibits his work internationally in exhibitions of emerging contemporary art from Miami.
New Times: What job do you have to pay the bills?
David Tamargo: I am assistant Curator and Art Director of the largest erotic art collection in the United States, the World Erotic Art Museum.
Does it help or hurt your art?
It
helps being part of an art institution/museum regardless of the content
when you’re an artist. Working here as well as my time at the
Wolfsonian-FIU and Frost Museum (all in Miami) has been beneficial to my
understanding of the museum/art world.
What is the best thing about having a day job? Worst?
Best: I work 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday; 35 hours a week leaves me with 133 hours a week to hunt dinosaurs or be an alligator with Otto Von Schirach.
Worst: That’s 1,820+ hours a year surrounded by sex.
Are you any good at your “Day Job?”
I am the best art director at WEAM.
Have you ever blurred the lines of your day job and artistic job?
I
can’t see myself ever urban hunting the eight foot tall penis in the
museum … but naturally the lines blur as a curator, I have proposed
several exhibitions of local Miami artists here and offered my expertise
in the acquisition of erotic art by contemporaries.
Let’s say you just received a huge check and quit your day job, how do you see it playing out?
I’d buy Jillian Mayer‘s video art,“Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke”,
and give it to WEAM’s owner/curator Dr. Naomi Wilzig; she’d love it and
after a few years open a second museum with the largest collection of
Miami contemporary art.
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