PIPE DREAMS

Hughen/Starkweather’s series Pipe Dreams references illusory hopes and magical thinking about the availability of freshwater. Water is the essential element for the health and prosperity of municipalities, agriculture, and ecosystems, and a key ingredient in manufacturing and powering new technologies. Human histories and futures depend on the engineering and tools necessary to find and manage freshwater. As human infrastructures are inextricably woven into freshwater ecosystems, how might these systems fail or succeed together under unforeseen pressures?

The artists’ begin researching this question by conducting interviews with people from a wide variety of backgrounds including hydrologists, farmers, fishermen, engineers, lawyers, historians, glaciologists, and others. These interviews lead to additional research and site visits by the artists, who also collect materials from the sites — including water from rivers and bays, ash from wildfires, sand from deserts and shorelines, salt, borax, and dirt — and use those materials directly in the artworks. The resulting works layer past, present and future through abstract forms, reflecting the ambiguities and complexities of our time.