This work references the 37,000 tons of sand that are trucked from the north end of Ocean Beach in San Francisco to the eroding south end, 3.5 miles away, every few years in hopes of shoring up the beach that is suffering from accelerated erosion related to climate change and sea level rise.

Hughen/Starkweather is the collaboration of San Francisco artists Jennifer Starkweather and Amanda Hughen, who have worked as a team since 2006. Together they create research-based, abstract artworks about specific locations. Each project begins with intensive research, including maps, photographs, data, and interviews with community members. Similar to early cartographers, who were dependent on inconsistent tools and word-of-mouth information, the artists follow an unpredictable trail of information about a place. The resulting drawings and paintings reinterpret the complex narratives of landscape, creating new and unexpected forms through which to view a place, its history, and its possible futures.

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). 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).