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Arts & Entertainment

Finding Cohesive Multiplicity In Driftwood

An eccentric scholar and a garbage sculptor debut a collaborative artwork and discuss their minds.

Robert Oxnam’s personalities collaborate in his art. He can attribute each element in every piece of work to one of his three selves.

“I’m very aware of who is involved,” he said in a discussion at the Brooklyn Zen Center in Gowanus last week. “The different parts have names. The different parts have their own memories. The different parts often have abilities that other parts do not, whether it’s language, or music."

The discussion was held the same night as the opening of "Washed Up," a collaboration between Oxnam and the sculptor Ellen Driscoll. Curator Noah Fischer described the work.

The piece, composed of chunks of driftwood and plastic sculptures attached to the wall, is about forty feel long and twelve feet high. It evokes an urban beach after a storm.

Fischer, who grew up on a Zen farm in California, installed one of Oxnam’s shows at the Interchurch Center on the Upper West Side last summer. The driftwood caught his eye. He decided to pair Oxnam with Driscoll, head of the sculpture department at Rhode Island School of Design, where she had been Fischer’s mentor.

Driscoll lives in Brooklyn. Many of her works are made of plastic water bottles that she finds in trash cans at 5:30 a.m., during daily hunts that she called "disgusting, rigorous." She cuts the bottles up and uses the materials to construct model cities and geometric designs. Her sculptures often explore environmental themes.

Oxnam is the former president of the Asia Society.

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“He has personally hosted Bill Gates and Warren Buffet on Mao’s train through China,” Fischer said. “He’s manned a sailboat by himself through international waters-- struck a whale.”

In 2005, Oxnam wrote A Fractured Mind, a memoir about his experiences with multiple-personality disorder. For many years, he shuffled between eleven personalities. His names for them included The Witch, Eyes, Lawrence, The Librarian and Bobby, a rollerblading performance artist.

"He's experienced many different minds," Fischer said.

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Years of therapy helped Oxnam get down to three personalities.

He only started doing sculpture about three years ago, when he found a piece of driftwood on the north shore of Long Island. Inspired by the tradition of Chinese scholar rocks, he brought the wood back to his studio. It was filthy. He scraped off the dead barnacles, washed out the pockets of mud and cleaned the bugs out of the wood, cursing in Chinese. Then he buffed it with a Scotch-Brite pad and applied to it a layer of organic milk paint. He considers his work in the vein of the "found art" movement.

The two artists met for the first time in December. For the installation of the piece, which combined pre-made elements from each artist, Fischer put them on a rigorous schedule for two days. They meditated for a half hour in the morning, then they alternated periods of collaborative work with periods of individual work in silence. In the evening, they meditated again.

At the “conversation about the mind” last week, Fischer and the artists sat cross-legged on traditional Japanese zafu cushions; Fischer in a perfect half-lotus, Oxnam folding his long legs into what looked like an excruciating Indian-pose.

Oxnam brought up the Roman concept of “the genius,” which comes to artists when it pleases, leaving them inspired or barren.

“Sometimes the genius never comes,” he said.

The kernel of "Washed Up," he said, developed during one half-hour period on the first day, during which he lost all sense of time.

“We started rather tentatively to work together. Suddenly it started to happen. Ellen went into some kind of zone that took the whole right side of the room. We felt like the genius came in and visited us once,” he said. “Please come back!” he added.

During the mediation that Fischer prescribed, Oxnam said, he listened to the conversations in his mind between his different personalities.

“You look at this room and we’re all quiet,” he said. “And, my God, what’s going on if your head is anything like mine?”

For Oxnam, his first experience of his identities coming together in a collaborative effort came through artistic expression.

“We’re all afflicted not with multiple personality disorder, but with multiple identities,” Oxnam said. “When I say the word ‘mind,’ I think of minds. I think of identities that are multiple within us. The challenge is to find cohesive multiplicity-- something that finds a common soul.”

Oxnard believes one can come to self-knowledge by “introducing” the differing elements of one’s personality to each other, and letting them converse.

“The operating philosophy among therapists, until a few years ago, was that you had to ‘integrate,’” he said.

“'Integrate,' to me, is a word like ‘root canal.’ ‘Spinal tap.’” he said. “Not a happy thought.”

"Washed Up" runs until June 9 at the Brooklyn Zen Center, 505 Carroll St., Suite 2A, Brooklyn, NY 11215. 718-701-1083

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