
Group Print Exhibition: Claire Falkenstein, Dan Shapiro, and Dennis Beal
San Francisco Museum of Art
Falkenstein’s embossed prints depend on the same visual esthetic as does her sculpture, utilizing the relief surface with rich black and gold inks applied as decorative elements in the same manner molten brass and great hunks of glass are applied to linear metal brambles in her sculpture.
Similarly Dan Shapiro’s metal intaglio print technique is closely related to his assemblage manner. Unlike Falkenstein, his prints are inferior when compared with his constructions. In both mediums he relies on found objects to create ambiguous shapes on either dark or light voids. The prints become overly formal and rigid in design, which defeats the informal quality of plastic toys and sundry other objects employed in the constructed shapes.
Dennis Seal’s accomplishments with the combined techniques of color etching and collograph are sophisticated and urbane in a droll manner. He puns on patriotism via emblems and plaques depicted in a hard, linear manner. All his prints are of a high quality but his imagery gets rather thin in many of the examples shown.

