Commpattern=Arms with Hearts

Dennis Ray Beall

Commpatterns, short for 'communication patterns', is defined as those hallmark ways that people typically communicate. They're often unconscious and most people don't even realize that they have particular pattern.

The technical skill, keen design eye, and dark humor of printmaker Dennis Beall make this surreal composition at once elegant and intriguingly disturbing. From a distance, "Compattern" resembles a Baroque playing card, and the black-red-white color scheme, sharply embossed edges, and expertly incised textures give the composition the feel of a high-end invitation, as if to welcome the viewer to a debutante's ball.

On closer inspection, chaos ensues. Wild, hair-like fibers collide with mutated shapes as if we are witnessing the destruction of a living thing. Hints of limbs and wings explode outward, yet remain within the refined border of the shaped plate, two perfectly intact valentine hearts untouched in their respective corners intrude into the composition. Beall's works rarely allow the viewer to assume anything, and "Compattern..." doesn't deviate from that notion.

Oklahoma born printmaker Dennis Beall began working in printmaking as a student at San Francisco State College in the early 1950s. At that time he produced a series of Abstract Expressionist color lithographs, all in very limited editions. A friendship with printmaker John Ihle led him to work in intaglio in the late 1950s.

Beall was registrar at the Oakland Museum of California briefly in 1958 before becoming a curator at the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts in San Francisco, working with Gunter Troche. He held that position until 1965 when he began his teaching career at San Francisco State University where he taught printmaking.