Dennis Beach is a man who balances intention with flow.
A respected visual artist, usually combining sculpture and painting — Beach is influenced by simplicity and essence. “My work involves processes that transform materials, quite often plywood and paint, into objects that combine the beauty and order that I mine from our natural world.”
Even if you don’t may not recognize his name, you’ve likely noticed some of Beach’s work. He has a permanent piece in the Delaware Art Museum called “Drift #19,” a rippling yellow and orange wooden piece that hangs just outside the gift shop. The new Comcast building in Philadelphia is also a permanent home for Beach’s “Curve #10,” a substantial series of wooden parentheses that evokes a tropical forest.
Beach was born in the Eastern Shore of Maryland, but moved a lot, with his father working for the government when he was a kid. It’s not hard to see the influence of his time in the Eastern Shore in the wavelike twists often found in his work. Beach later moved to Baltimore for his BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art and created a studio there. “I didn’t realize until I was about 30 that I was capable of doing things artistically and wanted to do things artistically,” Beach says. “I rented a two-car garage where I set up a studio. I think that’s the key for a large number of artists, having a space of their own to work in,” Beach said.
It was at an art show in Baltimore in 2002 where Beach met Delaware artist Toni Vandegrift. The two hit it off and Beach ended up moving to Delaware. “Sometimes you just have to listen to the signs. I kept my Baltimore job for the first sixth months, just taking Amtrak back and forth. I was doing metal and woodworking in a fabrication shop in Baltimore called Gutierrez Studios, which is still there.” Beach considers his time there to have been an integral part of his education.
The move to Delaware created a clear path forward for Beach. After arriving, he found studio space at dramatically more affordable rates than the larger cities. He received his MFA from the University of Delaware in 2005, and quickly thereafter began to craft a style that would become the seed for the work he is doing today.
