Since 2010, Hughen/Starkweather have been creating artwork about the San Francisco Bay. This piece is from their Bay Bridge Project, in which they explored the past and future of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge as it was undergoing the transition from the earthquake-damaged East Span to a new bridge. The artists interviewed bridge architects and engineers, researched commute patterns, environmental data, topographical maps and diagrams, engineering drawings, and photographs. The artists were able to tour various stages of construction via boat, and go to the top of the 20-story scaffolding on the new bridge tower in a construction elevator. A video work from this series, Requiem, is currently on view at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco through July 2017. 

Hughen/Starkweather is the collaboration of artists Jennifer Starkweather and Amanda Hughen. They create research-based, abstract artworks about specific places. Each project begins with intensive research about a location, including maps, photographs, data, and oral histories from local community members. Similar to the way in which early cartographers were dependent on inconsistent tools and on word-of-mouth information from sailors and travelers, Hughen/Starkweather research place through found data and the personal memories of others.

Hughen/Starkweather have exhibited widely, including the Asian Art Museum (SF), the Public Policy Institute of California (SF), University of San Francisco, and the Contemporary Jewish Museum (SF), among others. Their commisson to create a permanent public artwork embedded in the glass exterior and roof deck of the Union Square Central Subway Station in downtown San Francisco will open in 2018. 

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). The artists live and work in San Francisco, and have been collaborating as a team since 2006.