Amanda Hughen has exhibited internationally, including New York, Paris, and San Francisco. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the DeYoung Museum of Art, the Headlands Center for the Arts (both in San Francisco), and Yaddo (New York), as well as a National Endowment for the Arts Scholar. She has served as chair of the Advisory Board of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and has been a guest lecturer at Colby College in Maine, the California College of the Arts and the Townsend Center for the Humanities, both in San Francisco, and Washington and Lee University in Virginia, among other places. Hughen received a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from Washington and Lee University and a Master's Degree in Fine Arts from University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded a full Block Grant Fellowship and the Eisner Prize.

Hughen's working method takes forms abstracted from biology, architecture, geology and topography and creates highly layered constructions. Juxtaposing tool-assisted marks - marks made using templates, rulers and screenprinting - with freehand drawings that mimic these marks, Hughen allows a build-up of rigid forms and lines to create layers of depth and movement. The forms accumulate until they reach a critical mass, creating a release of energy: a moving, exploding swarm. In both the formal and conceptual aspects of her work, Hughen is fascinated with exploring the ambiguity of natural and synthetic, of macro and micro, of unique and mass-produced.