Artists from across disciplines, mediums and cultures are adding to a creative garden at the Galerie Buhler Gallery at St. Boniface Hospital this month. The creative diversity that results from this creates an artistic ecosystem called Tending the Wild, which shows the range of beauty that can be found in the natural world, from the carefully pruned to the wildly overgrown. .embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } One needs only to compare the art of Theo Permus and Arafeh Zamani to get a sample of the diversity that the exhibition reflects. A performance artist and painter, Permus’s contribution is a slide show juxtaposed on top of a painting of two decaying roses, an example of the beauty that can come from letting nature run its course. Zamani, meanwhile, showcases a negargari, a Persian miniature practice from her culture that dates back centuries. “In my painting in the traditional way, most of the artists didn’t want to paint the nature in the natural way. They don’t want to show the natural world,” Zamani says of the view that her practice takes of the wild. “It’s mostly about how the idea about the nature should be.” “It’s a contour you have to have with nature to see how much involvement goes into it,” Permus adds, noting the relationship that all people have with nature, regardless of their creative abilities or ambitions, is something to be monitored – knowing when to tend to the wild and when to let it carry on. “It’s kind of a fine line between how much you intervene to that and how much you let it just grow by itself,” he says. “It’s the same thing [as] the relationship to making art... you have to have that kind of generosity.” The generosity of the artists in Tending the Wild is such that the pieces spill from its usual walls and onto the east lawn of St. Boniface Hospital. That’s where audiences can find a bison statue made in collaboration with artist Britt Ross at the Living Prairie Museum. The statue is made from clay and seeds, which, over time, will fall from the bison onto the ground, thus creating the statue’s own garden. The contribution is something that curator hannah_g notes adds to the healing nature of the artistic garden that is the exhibition. “I think just as when you go into a garden, you are transported into a different kind of world where you can relax,” she says. “There are places in the gallery where you can be quite peaceful, just as you would in a garden. And there’s other places where you can just really look and you can explore and you can discover things as you would in a garden.” “It’s a place which I hope is going to be able to cater to lots of different people’s different experiences.” Tending the Wild runs at St. Boniface Hospital’s Galerie Buhler Gallery until November 14. Hours and more information are available at the gallery’s website.