I’m an artist!

By Joel Thurtell

For the argument to work, you must agree that I am an artist.

I’ll assume that much.

Otherwise, my reasoning is high and dry.

Je suis artiste.

There, a declaration in French is always so much more positive that a flat statement en anglais.

I learned recently at a lecture on contemporary art that if an artist says something is art, then by gum, it is art!

The trouble started in my head, really, where trouble often commences.

I was listening to a lecture on contemporary art by former Detroit Free Press art critic Marsha Miro, now head of MOCAD — the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. Her talk was part of a winter series of lectures presented by Wayne State University’s SOAR program — Society of Active Retirees.

Miro was talking on art in the 20th century. She showed a lot of slides of things that I would not have thought were art. I never thought of concrete culverts as works or art, even if they’re made square instead of circular and even if littered across a field. Might as well tour a contemporary landfill and call it art, to my way of thinking.

Ditto some guy who doesn’t know how to play the violin strolling around his studio making squawking noises. If I had seen this guy, I’d have thought he was nuts.

He was not nuts.

He was an artist exploring the boundaries of his space.

Well into the two-hour lecture, my wife leaned toward me and whispered, “This is a bunch of bullshit!”

No doubt about it, I thought: bullshit.

But very interesting bullshit.

Maybe even very useful bullshit.

At one point, a skeptical member of the audience asked, “So you’re saying that if an artist says it’s art, that’s what it is?”

The questioner was not alone. There was a buzzing in the chamber that nearly drowned out the speaker. The buzzing of dozens of bullshit meters going off at once.

From Marsha Miro, the answer came back affirmative: If an artist says it’s art, then it is art.

End of argument.

Wow.

Once you get your head around this concept of everything is art if I say it is (provided I am an artist), then the possibilities are endless.

That bent paper clip on the floor?

Art.

That old bicycle beside a trash can?

Art.

Well, it’s art if an artist says it is.

It’s a pretty exalted power.

Not everyone qualifies to be an artist.

But since some of you agreed that I’m an artist, I can proceed to outline my plan.

You did agree that I’m an artist, didn’t you?

All it takes is one person to dub me an artist, and I already have that distinction, even if I’m not willing to name the dubber.

What if I find an old tire beside the Rouge River. Is the tire art?

If I say it is, then it is.

Now some of you may be aware that my friend and colleague, Patricia Beck, and I took a canoe 27 miles up the polluted and logjam-infected Rouge River back in 2005.

Pat is a remarkably talented photographer, and along the way she took some amazing photos which the Detroit Free Press published in a series of articles about the river’s condition.

The year 2005 was when environmental officials said the Rouge would be safe for swimming and fishing. It was neither and likely is getting worse. But Pat and I documented the river by doing what nobody had done before — going by canoe from the river’s mouth to a bridge in Southfield during five days of hard and dangerous travel. Our purpose was to take Free Press readers to a place where they would never go. Later, Pat’s photos and my narrative were published by Wayne State University Press as a book, UP THE ROUGE! PADDLING DETROIT’S HIDDEN RIVER.

Amid the stench, the wrecked cars and boats, the immense masses of jammed up logs and debris, the last thing we were thinking about was art.

But as I listened to Marsha Miro, I began to think of our canoe trip in another way. All of the objects that made the trip possible, from the canoes, the paddles, the life jackets, hip boots, binoculars, cameras, waterproof bags, compass, notebooks, digital audio recorder and even the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we took along to  eat. By contemporary artists’ standards, these things were objets d’art. (Always feels more legitimate spitting it out in French.)

Whatever you want to call it, art or just plain things, stuff, whatever, a selection of our gear will be on display — along with a collection of Pat Beck’s photos from the canoe trip — at West Bloomfield Parks and Recreation from May 1 through mid-October.

I’ll be talking about the trip at West Bloomfield Parks and Recreation at 2 p.m. on May 1.

I’m told that someone at West Bloomfield parks and Rec noticed something missing from the faux logjam created in a display case by West Bloomfield naturalist Laurel Zoet: The logjam lacks a discarded tire.

Well, I went poking around the Rouge River at Fenkell and Telegraph and found just what our fake logjam needs to make it look authentic: an old tire that I plan to put in the exhibit. A friend has offered an old fire extinguisher, another object seem too often along the river on our trek in 2005.

Anybody who saw me rolling that tire through the trees might have thought I was crazy.

Not so.

That tire is art.

How’s that?

Because I say so.

You see, I am an artist.