Watershed Art & Ecology is an experimental cultural space in Chicago led by Claire Pentecost and Brian Holmes.

In her practice, artist and writer Pentecost uses poetic and inductive drawing, photography and sculptural installation to explore the living matters of the unified multi-dimensional being that animates the critical zone of our planet. Her work is driven by research and inspired by questions of form. Holmes is an essayist and mapmaker exploring territories of social-ecological change. He has a PhD in Romance Languages and Literature from UC Berkeley and lived an earlier life in France as a translator, cultural critic and activist, collaborating with artists, museums and social movements all over Europe.

Together they formed Deep Time Chicago, a collective exploring cultural change in response to ecological crisis and the Anthropocene Commons, an international research network. The mission of Watershed Art & Ecology is to create openings for discussions of the current human predicaments: societal, environmental, economic, and racial. Defining both art and ecology beyond standard expectations, it presents programs and exhibits that address our relations with each other and with the natural environment. Through biocultural experiences of place – “watersheds” – it seeks emergent ecological knowledge.