Amusement Machine

Dennis Ray Beall

Oklahoma born printmaker Dennis Beall began working abstractly with color lithography as a student at San Francisco State College in the early 1950s. A friendship with printmaker John Ihle led him to working in intaglio in the late 1950s. "Amusement Machine" was done in 1958 using a combination of etching, aquatint the create the blacks and whites and soft-ground to add texture to the composition.

Beall also was a boat builder and pilot and had an intense interest in mechanical things and the ways they worked. This image has swirling, dynamic circles and whorls that are offset with towers that appear to have springs. The viewer can imagine the cacophony of carnival music and electricity of an amusement park at night.

Beall was registrar at the Oakland Museum of California briefly in 1958 before becoming a curator at the Achenbach Foundation for the 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.