Two artists showing now at the Mennonite Heritage Gallery explore life and death in nature and in our city in reference to the upcoming Diversity Gardens.

The shows are titled Extensions of Death by Melissa Coyle and The Conservatory Files by Sandra Campbell.

Coyle’s abstract oil paintings are made to look like decaying wildlife. "Death is something that we fear and want to avoid," says Coyle, so she took it upon herself to present death as a beautiful part of life.

Coyle does this in an interesting way by abstracting road kill. She changes the colours and shape of the animals and creates beautiful oil paintings. Coyle explained she uses oil paint to show the layers of tissue in the body using thin, sometimes transparent layers of paint.

A recent graduate of the University of Manitoba fine arts program, this is Coyle's thesis series. After she graduated she received funding from the Manitoba Arts Council and Mentorship in a program called MAWA (Mentoring Artists for Women's Art).

Coyle says in growing up in Manitoba she would go to her families cabin in the White Shell every weekend.

"What I love about the cabin is that you are in nature, it's peaceful, it's beautiful and I would say the cycle of life and death is the most obvious."

For a long time, the conservatory served the same purpose for many Winnipeggers. It was an escape to be surrounded by nature and beauty, to be at peace in a small corner of the busy city.

Campbell's project, The Conservatory Files, was started in 2016, two years before the Conservatory closed. Campbell used this time to capture the life of the Conservatory through her paintings, photographs, and writings.

Campbell's art came from a broken heart and the feeling of losing something important.

"They decided to get rid of it and it just broke a lot of people's hearts . . . People enjoyed it for the life that it gave."

And while the conservatory gave life to so many people it was given a beautiful death by Campell.

Campbell says "I'm kind of looking forward to Canada's Diversity Gardens, I'm sure it will be a hit."

Assiniboine Park is now in the process of building the Diversity Gardens which promises to be bigger and better encompassing even more life than the old conservatory.

Laura Cabak the manager of communications and public relations for the Assiniboine Park Conservancy says “We look back on the conservatory which was beautiful and relevant to the times it was built."

However, Cabak says it was time for an upgrade. The park has taken inspiration for its new complex from The Eden Project in England and Gardens by the Bay in Singapore to create a “modern, educational and inspirational experience” in Winnipeg.

Cabak says the goal for the gardens is that “Everything in the Leaf (the Diversity Garden's main building), its geared toward connecting people from different cultures, from different parts of the world to that really common denominator that is plants and nature.

“We are all connected by this reliance on nature and on plants for various parts of our lives." We rely on nature for everything from food, building materials, inspiration, health and medicine and simply the beauty of it.

This connection to and reliance on nature is beautifully shown through the exhibits at the Mennonite Heritage Gallery and will be the goal of the Leaf and all of the new gardens in the Assiniboine Park Diversity Gardens coming in 2020.

The art exhibit runs from March 15 to April 27 at the Mennonite Heritage Gallery on the campus of Winnipeg's Canadian Mennonite University.