<p>Joyce Lincoln, co-owner of Northwest by Northwest Gallery in Cannon Beach, holds up a bronze statue by Georgia Gerber called "Rabbit Row" that Brian Taylor, the production manager at Bruce's Candy Kitchen in Cannon Beach, created a replica of in preparation for Spring Unveiling.</p>

If youve come to Cannon Beach for this years Spring Unveiling the 14th annual celebration of new art at galleries around town dont spoil your appetite on hors doeuvres. Cannon Beachs chefs have art to unveil, too.

The art celebration continues with the third annual Art From the Chefs Table, an aspect of the festival where 28 restaurants feature special menus created for this weekend and inspired by specific artworks, many of which will be on display.

In the kitchen at The Irish Table, Crystal Corbin spreads roasted pecans across a baking sheet the size of the Irish flag thats snapping in the wind outside. She shakes simple syrup over them like sweet paint and slides the palette into the oven to bake or fire or glaze or whatever art does in a furnace to perfect it.

For Art From the Chefs Table, inspired by what her husband Sean calls the perfectly melancholy art of Scott Johnson, shes creating comfort food, a bavette with green peppercorns, blue cheese and, she says, a nice brown reduction sauce. Searching for metaphors to describe his wifes cuisine, Sean tries pipe tobacco, a warm blanket, fire in the hearth, a pair of good slippers on a rainy day. The Corbins have chosen one of Johnsons moodier paintings of dormant trees to hang in The Irish Table dining room this weekend.

Across town, though, at Castaways, youll find a bit of hopeful tropical ambiance on the street corner. When Chef Josh Tuckman looks at Johnsons painting, he finds the hopeful fragrance of a Japanese spring. Johnson, who happened upon Tuckman and his partner Megan Miller admiring his work at White Bird Gallery, offered to create a painting specifically for them to show prominently behind their bar at Castaways. Tuckman will have a go at a culinary version. Hes serving quail stuffed with shiitake mushrooms, lemon grass and ginger, with forbidden black rice (for emperors only in the old days) and, because they remind him of bonsai trees, broccolini.

Downtown at Bruces Candy Kitchen, another culinary artist is ready for the unveiling. As he feeds a rope of taffy into the antique cutting and wrapping machine, Brian Taylor deftly pulls and fakes down fathoms of it from a taffy lump the size of a fat spring Chinook hen. He might be a potter at his wheel or a glass blower at his kiln, but hes a candymaker, and over the machinerys racket he describes how he created a study in chocolate of Georgia Gerbers bronze sculpture Rabbit Row for Art From the Chefs Table.

Taylor first filled two buckets level with brown sugar, then pressed a different side of Gerbers sculpture into each bucket and, after pouring full each impression with precisely tempered milk chocolate, he refrigerated them a few hours until the chocolate solidified. Then Taylor rinsed the brown sugar from each chocolate half with cold water and carefully shaved excess chocolate from each so theyd mate back-to-back. Rather than whittle the chocolate away to precisely match the bronze original, though, Taylor left some parts of the sculpture coarse.

Im not necessarily copying Gerbers art. Im using it to make my own art, he explains.

He poured hot water on a candy-makers table, heating it so the mating sides of the chocolate sculpture melted. After hed stuck them firmly together, he carved some distinctive imperfections into the sculpture, then heated the table again, melting the base and crafting it so the chocolate rabbits could stand alone. The result could be Rodins.

Larry Peters began cooking at the old Whaler restaurant and then cooked his way through town at the Dory Launch Grill, at Pulliccis, at Dooleys West Texas Barbecue, at Doogers and at the Midtown Café before stopping 12 years ago in the kitchen of the Warren House Pub. He doesnt fancy himself an artist. No, Im not even a chef. Im just a glorified line cook, he says. But listen to him describe, hardly pausing to breathe, his culinary response to a Tualatin Valley vineyard landscape by Oregon artist Michael Orwick.

That pastoral setting made me think of goat cheese and wine, and I thought, heres an idea. I can cut some beef tenderloins into medallions, sear them in a pan and reduce some red wine and then some cream and then some goat cheese, some shallots and some mushrooms, put the steaks in the oven to finish off while Im reducing the sauce, put them on the plate, pour the sauce over the top, beside some mashed potatoes, maybe some asparagus. Peters plans to pair his medallions of beef with wine from the same vineyard Orwick painted.

Does that sound too artistic for a pub? Peters laughs. Well, I thought that was the idea.

That pastoral setting made me think of goat cheese and wine, and I thought, heres an idea.

At the Bistro, where culinary and visual art lovers can sip passion fruit-infused rum or rose-and-cucumber-infused gin, Anita Dueber will hang, on loan from Archimedes Gallery, Tiffany Bozics Passion in Paradise, an airy acrylic-on-maple painting of tropical birds perched on an elaborate Bird of Paradise.

Matt Dueber, in the kitchen, will create a special grilled white sea bass with tropical fruit salsa and jasmine rice for the occasion, and Wes Wahrmund, on guitar, will create more of that warm, clean, Brazilian sound.

The Bistro, one of Cannon Beachs iconic restaurants, burned down last year and has been painstakingly rebuilt. Its sort of a spring unveiling for us, too, Deuber says.

At Insomnia, barista Lynn Halldorson is haunted by Constellation Creator, a very eclectic mixed-media galaxy painting, futuristic, lots of stars, very dark, very foreboding that shell borrow from Archimedes Gallery to hang in the shop this weekend.

For the occasion, shes designed a dark, though less foreboding, caramel mocha with a constellation of local Cannon Beach Sea Salt Companys vanilla salt sprinkled over a galaxy of whipped cream.

Over at The Wayfarer, Chef Josh Archibald is honoring local artist Jeffrey Hull with a sorbet desert inspired by the local colors of his sunsets, his shorelines and forested uplands. Ive known the Hulls for years and years. They come here often, theyre involved in the community, they live here year round, and Jeffrey captures great landscapes across the North Coast. Archibald, a big guy himself, was drawn to an expansive watercolor beach scene. Its huge, he says. And itll be hanging in The Wayfarers lobby.

His team at The Wayfarer has designed a desert to capture the color of Hulls painting, striping the plate with an ocean-blue chocolate spray, then toasting and grinding coconut Im looking for sand, says Archibald and topping that with an edible crystallized beach tree garnish and three sorbets: yellow, blood red and pink. Itll be spot-on for color, especially as it begins to melt and begins to muddle like the background of the painting, he says.

A score of other skilled culinary artists at Cannon Beach restaurants are taking similar turns interpreting visual art for diners palates this weekend. As you wander between galleries for the Spring Unveiling, be sure to leave plenty of room for supper.