EARTH DAY ZOOM TALK | Paul Walde: Treescape Revolution

In honor of Earth Day, the UC Botanical Garden is pleased to host an online talk with award-winning artist, composer and educator Paul Walde.

Paul Walde is an interdisciplinary artist living in Victoria, Canada on lək̓ʷəŋən territory where he is a Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Victoria. For the past 30 years, his work has been engaged with addressing environmental issues including: exploring non-human activity and communication, global warming, deforestation, land use, endangered species, and the artworld. Originally trained as a painter, Walde’s music and sound compositions have been a prominent feature in his artwork for over 25 years. He is best known for his interdisciplinary performance works staged in the natural environment, and documentation of these events is frequently used as the basis of Walde’s sound and video installations which have been the subject of exhibitions nationally and internationally.

In this talk, he will discuss his recent works about the primary forests of Vancouver Island and the challenges they face. In 2025, Walde presented Forestorium, a full-length opera featuring 8 soloists, orchestra and chorus, in an old growth forest on Ma’amtagila territory on Northern Vancouver Island. Treescape Revolution No.1,  a true-to-scale photographic image of one revolution around an entire 36 foot circumference of an old-growth cedar tree, attempts to describe the scale and the complexity of these organisms and the systems they belong to and suggests that a tree is not just a tree but an ecosystem within an ecosystem.

Treescape Revolution #1 will be part of a proposed Natural Discourse exhibit in fall 2026. For more information please contact the organizers at naturaldiscourse.org

Online talk is free, donations welcome, registration required for Zoom link.

NOTE: All participants are required to have and sign into their own personal Zoom account prior to joining meetings hosted by UC Berkeley.

Register