My Perfect Life Keeps Leaking into Your Perfect Life (2010)

Research initiated during residency at Künstlerhäuser Schöppingen, Germany

My Perfect Life Keeps Leaking into Your Perfect Life is an installation composed of three sculptural systems designed to demonstrate material transformation, interdependence, and change over time. Developed during a residency in Schöppingen in 2010, the work brought together water, fungi, soil, dye, light, and manufactured objects to create an environment in which each component altered the behaviour and form of the others.

The central sculpture functioned as a circulating water system: a pool, fountain, tank, and series of drip bottles continuously moved dyed water across a wooden platform. As the system operated, the platform warped, stained, and gradually changed in response to moisture and pigment. Rather than producing a fixed outcome, the structure performed ongoing, unpredictable modifications on itself.

The second sculpture consisted of four ornate plastic planters filled with wood substrate inoculated with pink oyster and shiitake mushroom spores. As the fungi consumed the substrate, they generated solid mycelium casts of the planter interiors. These casts, stacked into an eight-foot column, introduced biological growth as a sculptural process.

The third sculpture was a compacted sphere of soil and grass seed wrapped in a mesh embedded with small LEDs. Balanced on wooden beams above two plastic basins, the sphere slowly germinated and shifted form as the grass grew. Powered by a small solar panel, the LEDs lit the structure each evening, further emphasizing its changing surface.

Together, the three sculptures operated as an improvisational system rather than a set of finished objects. Water warped wood, mushrooms reshaped containers, grass altered the sphere’s geometry, and light responded to environmental conditions. The work foregrounded the instability of materials and the complexity of interactions among organic and constructed elements, an installation without a predetermined narrative, defined instead by continual emergence and mutual influence.