1985 The Beginning — CHANSCHATZ.NYC

1985 Berkeley, California

Eric and Heather ChanSchatz (Eric Chan and Heather Schatz) met at the University of California Berkeley in 1985 as undergraduate students in the College of Environmental Design.

They started collaborating during a drawing class (Drawing 187) they took in the Fall of 1986. During one of the drawing exercises they switched seats midway through the class and finished each other’s drawings. They sketched and wrote notes about the experience which they titled “Seeing with Your Mouth, Speaking with Your Eyes”.

They asked Professor Joe Slusky if they could complete the work together, and he agreed if they accepted the same grade. They each received an A- in the class.

Beginning with this sketch on chipboard, ChanSchatz documented their collaboration over the next 30 years in the artwork series titled “Our Diaries” (Art Diaries AD.0001).

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Our Diaries

Thoughts, Conversations, Projects & Essays (1986-2015)

Chanschatz started the Diaries project in 1986 and continued through 2015 as a record of their collaborative practice. The Diaries comprise over 13,0000 writings, sketches, and typewritten pages primarily on yellow pads.

Seeing with Your Mouth, Speaking with Your Eyes, Marker on chipboard, Eric and Heather ChanSchatz, 1986

Cover Page: Our Diaries Thoughts, Conversations, Projects and Essays, AD.0001 1986 - 1987, Eric Chan & Heather Schatz

ERIC CHAN & HEATHER SCHATZ - ART DIARY AD.0001 1986 - 1987, 2-3-87 Page 1

ERIC CHAN & HEATHER SCHATZ - ART DIARY AD.0001 1986 - 1987, 2-3-87 Page 2

ERIC CHAN & HEATHER SCHATZ - ART DIARY AD.0001 1986 - 1987, 2-3-87 Page 3

ERIC CHAN & HEATHER SCHATZ - ART DIARY AD.0001 1986 - 1987, 2-3-87 Page 4

ChanSchatz Diaries Wallach Gallery Installation 1997

The next semester ChanSchatz set up a joint studio and completed their first series of works which were exhibited in 1987 in room 106 in Bauer Wurster Hall*, the home of the College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley.

Catherine Bauer Wurster’s legacy to live on in renaming of UC Berkeley building

The concrete Brutalist architecture-style building on UC Berkeley’s east end is known to the campus community as Wurster Hall, named after husband and wife William Wurster and Catherine Bauer Wurster, Berkeley professors who together in the 1950s helped to create Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design (CED), the first college of its kind in the world.

To the greater public, though, Catherine Bauer Wurster is not equally recognized as part of the Wurster Hall namesake.

“I think a lot of people just assume the building is only named after her husband and have no idea about her legacy and significant accomplishments,” said Berkeley Environmental Design Archives Curator Chris Marino. “She was just as much behind the creation of CED as was her husband.”

That is why the building is being renamed Bauer Wurster Hall.