Hughen/Starkweather is the collaboration of artists Jennifer Starkweather and Amanda Hughen, who have worked as a team for almost 20 years. Together they create research-based, abstract artworks about specific topics or locations. For the past several years Hughen/Starkweather have researched the impacts of climate disruption on places where water meets land, exploring engineered, human-made structures that are increasingly, inextricably interwoven with natural systems in the landscape, and how these systems might fail or succeed together.

In looking to answer this question, the artists interview a variety of community members and specialists; visit water systems and archives; read articles, books, and oral histories; and look at data trajectories and possible future outcomes. (More about their research process here.) The resulting artworks reinterpret this gathered information into new and unexpected forms. The abstract artworks include strong hints of recognizable topographies, landforms, waterways, and infrastructures. 

By allowing the artworks to resonate with the collected data without presenting it in a didactic way, Hughen/Starkweather do not attempt to offer solutions or concrete information, but hope to reveal unexpected connections, ambiguities, and complexities; and prompt curiosity, uncertainty, and new perspectives in the viewer.

Overwhelming news and conflicting information about the climate crisis can lead to feelings of anxiety, guilt, and helplessness. Can art offer unique ways to approach the vast uncertainties before us and to illuminate possible ways forward? 

See recent press here. Contact the artists and join their mailing list here.

Hughen/Starkweather exhibitions include the Asian Art Museum (SF), the Public Policy Institute of California (SF), University of San Francisco, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum (SF). Recent large-scale works include a commission by SFMOMA for a public work at the Chase Center, and a commission to create a permanent public artwork embedded in the glass exterior and roof deck of the Union Square Central Subway Station, both in downtown San Francisco. Hughen received an MFA from UC Berkeley and has been an artist-in-residence at the DeYoung Museum of Art (CA), the Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), Oxbow (CA), and Yaddo (NY). Starkweather received an MFA from Tyler School of Art (PA) and has been an artist-in-residence at Ucross (WY), Skowhegan (ME), Oxbow (CA), and Ragdale (IL). Hughen/Starkweather is the recipient of a 2020 San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant.