Orien McNeill, an artist and impresario of New York Metropolis’s DIY and participatory artwork neighborhood, whose work was experiential, theatrical and ephemeral and came about totally on the water — assume “Burning Man, however with the potential of drowning,” as one buddy put it — died on Could 15 at his house, a 52-foot-long ferryboat docked on a Brooklyn creek. He was 45.

His mom, Val Van Cleve, confirmed his loss of life, which was not extensively reported on the time. No trigger was given.

Mr. McNeill was an early pioneer of New York’s fetid waterways. He was among the many first artists to homestead on the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund website in Brooklyn, which he did twenty years in the past in a 1953 Chris-Craft boat that he christened the Meth Lab. (It was not a meth lab.)

Quickly, a cohort of road artists and Dumpster-diving freegans — the anti-consumerist foragers of the late aughts — who may in any other case have been squatting in Brooklyn warehouses, have been drawn to the identical lawless territory, a final frontier and haven within the ever-gentrifying New York Metropolis boroughs. They made artwork from scavenged supplies and held occasions that harked again to the Happenings of their Nineteen Sixties predecessors, though the occasions have been supposed for no viewers however themselves.

No critics have been summoned, and never a lot was documented. Mr. McNeill was their pied piper, guru and pirate prankster, who hatched extravagant, loosely organized adventures involving costumes, flotillas of handmade rafts and, as soon as, a pop-up bar on a sinking tugboat.

When Caledonia Curry, in any other case generally known as the artist Swoon, started to conceptualize “Swimming Cities” — winsome floating contraptions constructed from salvaged supplies that she launched on the Hudson River in 2008 — Mr. McNeill, her classmate from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, was an inspiration, venture architect and co-pilot.

The next 12 months, when she reimagined the venture for Venice, Mr. McNeill performed the identical function. With a crew of almost 30, Ms. Curry despatched her supplies to close by Slovenia, the place the delivery containers they have been in have been briefly held up by customs inspectors: They have been confused by the contents — they thought it was rubbish.

The crew members constructed their fantastical craft in Slovenia and sailed to Venice, the place they crashed the Biennale, enchanting the assembled artwork crowd because the vessels floated via the canals. Mr. McNeill served because the escort and advance guard, scooting about in a battered skiff in case somebody fell overboard.

“Orien launched me to world constructing,” Ms. Curry stated in an interview. “He was dwelling this lovely, feral existence on the water — the middle of this artist neighborhood. He shied away from the limelight, however his spirit knowledgeable all people.”

She added, “With artists, there’s at all times this factor about what’s artwork and what’s life, and no one held that nearer to the bone than Orien.”

Duke Riley, an artist recognized for releasing hundreds of pigeons outfitted with LEDs into the evening sky above the Brooklyn Navy Yard, in addition to constructing a wood reproduction of a Revolutionary Warfare-era sub and launching it on the Queen Mary 2, was a co-conspirator on a wide range of adventures.

One was the sinking bar, which Mr. McNeill persuaded Mr. Riley to assist him construct in a half-submerged tugboat with a rusted-out flooring. The bar opened at low tide, and because the hours handed, visitors finally discovered themselves waist-deep in water. They swam out earlier than the tide rose too excessive.

“He by no means let private security get in the way in which of a genius concept,” Mr. Riley stated.

He added: “Among the funnest and proudest and most fun moments have been with Orien, simply making issues. A lot of his works weren’t documented; they aren’t hanging in any museums. However there are lots of people he had a direct affect on which might be. Positively me. Perhaps, in time, individuals will look again and understand what an essential catalyst he was.”

Mr. McNeill was irresistible, stated Dan Glass, a fellow artist and frequent collaborator. He was like a mixture of Auntie Mame and George Carlin — or like a Martin Scorsese character however in a Wes Anderson film, he added, noting Mr. McNeill’s singular type. (Mr. McNeill favored blazers and jaunty feathered hats.)

He made meals into efficiency artwork. He as soon as served a roasted alligator to Mr. Riley in lieu of birthday cake (there have been candles). One other occasion featured martinis constituted of Pepto Bismol and garnished with Band-Aids (surprisingly drinkable, by all accounts).

He conceived an annual journey he referred to as “The Battle for Mau Mau Island,” named for a lump of landfill circled by a creek close to Floyd Bennett Area in Brooklyn. A whole bunch of intrepid individuals would arrange themselves into themed gangs and set out in home made craft of doubtful seaworthiness via Jamaica Bay to compete, “American Gladiators”-style, with varied props and pseudo-weapons.

The “boats” disintegrated as soon as the shenanigans have been over. For Mr. McNeill, the intent was to focus on the potential of town’s waterways “as a frontier of short-term arts and theatrics,” he instructed Gothamist journal in 2016, whereas mentioning the shortage of free artistic area on land. “An artists’ rumble with no winners” is how Chris Hackett, the founding father of the Madagascar Institute, a former artists’ neighborhood within the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, described the occasion.

Mr. McNeill’s most bold venture was impressed by Ms. Curry’s “Swimming Cities.” He needed to do the identical factor, however larger, and conceived a 500-mile journey alongside the Ganges River to Varanasi, the sacred metropolis and pilgrimage website in northern India. He referred to as it “The Swimming Cities of the Ocean of Blood.”

Mr. McNeill and a gaggle of collaborators constructed 5 steel pontoon boats in Brooklyn — three of them powered by bikes, one by sail and oars, and one other by paddle wheel — which he would captain. The boats have been designed to lock collectively for tenting on the water.

In 2010, they shipped the parts to a small Indian college within the metropolis of Farrukhabad, which had agreed to host them whereas the collaborators reassembled their craft. Although they’d spent two years elevating cash via occasions that Mr. McNeill orchestrated, they have been nonetheless underfunded and under-provisioned.

It was an arduous monthslong journey. Marauding monkeys attacked their camp. They usually noticed our bodies floating within the river. At one level they encountered a quarter-mile-wide concrete dam — a terrifying “Class 5 fast,” stated Porter Fox, a participant who knew his waterfalls (he had been a white-water information).

Mr. McNeill tackled it first. Mr. Fox went subsequent, his boat flipping finish over finish because it plummeted over the torrent. Clearly, it was not going to be potential for the remainder of the boats, or their crews, to outlive the dam. Mr. McNeill single-handedly disassembled the remaining boats on shore, one way or the other discovered a tractor for rent, and set off on land to bypass the dam.

“I keep in mind seeing him coming over an increase, like Lawrence of Arabia, waving from the tractor,” Mr. Fox stated. “It was simply so herculean. Nobody else may have sallied their spirit sufficient to consider getting out of this jam. Everybody simply needed to go house, and he’s, like, ‘No, we’re not accomplished.’”

Orien McNeill was born on Dec. 7, 1979, in Manhattan, the one little one of Ms. Van Cleve, a filmmaker, and Malcolm McNeill, an artist, creator and tv director. His mom and father are his solely speedy survivors.

Mr. McNeill’s godfather was the creator William S. Burroughs, with whom the elder Mr. McNeill had collaborated on a graphic novel. Mr. Burroughs baptized Orien with a dab of vodka from his afternoon drink. He additionally turned over the lease on his loft in TriBeCa to the household.

By age 10, Orien was drawing, portray and sculpting “in addition to any mature artist,” Malcolm McNeill stated. He taught his son how one can use an airbrush at 12 and a vacuum forming machine, for molding plastic, at 13, as a result of Orien needed to construct a spaceship.

“In any other case, I acquired out of the way in which,” Mr. McNeill stated. “He may make something.”

After graduating with a level in industrial design from Pratt in 2001, Orien spent a 12 months touring, stopping in New Zealand, Borneo, India and Eire. When he returned, he purchased the Chris-Craft, parked it within the Gowanus Canal and started homesteading there.

He later lived on a sailboat, which he reconfigured by slicing the mast off to make room for a large deck — the type one may construct for a home, cantilevered over the boat’s bow — in order that he may host extra individuals. “He would do something to create the ecosystem he needed,” Mr. Fox stated.

For his tenth birthday, Orien had requested his mother and father to get him enterprise playing cards. His father nonetheless has a number of.

“Orien McNeill,” they learn. “All of your desires made actual.”