[1][2] She began as a feminist painter in New York City but is best known for her connection with the NEA Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women's One World Cafe.
[4] Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Hughes graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1977 and moved to New York City two years later[1] to become a feminist painter.
[5] She worked as a waitress to support herself but felt unfulfilled, later writing: "Why had I moved to New York City to live in an even crummier apartment and do the same things that I was doing in Kalamazoo?
[6] Hughes' first performance at the WOW Café in the early 1980s was a piece called "My Life as a Glamour Don't", about various fashion mistakes.
[1][7] Critic Stephen Holden commented, in reviewing the play, "While Ms. Hughes's more poetic writing recalls Sam Shepard, the campy B-movie side of her sensibility shows her to be equally in tune with John Waters's movies and Charles Busch's drag extravaganzas.
She "worked with artists across the globe to build a loose network of over 35 Presidents Day events spanning the U.S., Britain and Italy.