Monday last found us in Cannon Beach with Rex and Diane Amos. You may remember (HA!?) that we visited them just about a year ago. The result of our first visit in 2011 will be a show at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art this summer (2012) of Rex’s stunning collage/Chine-colles. (OF COURSE we stopped at Wanda’s for lunch on the way to Cannon Beach…)
and then spent a fascinating afternoon looking at…first Rex’s “new” studio
and then going to the portfolios under the bed…
and the work in the garage…
Rex and Diane lived in Portland for 35 years and Rex worked through that time cutting with scissors and painting and making “combines”…writing, editing and publishing magazines, collecting junk, rabble-rousing. His life, his stories…are wonderful…but so is the art work. He developed a method over the years of making meticulously constructed collages, and then once a year taking a stack of collages to Magnolia Editions in the Bay area and doing the last step of running them through the press as Chine-colles. The show this summer will have 14 or so of these works, plus small collages and ephemera. Not to be missed, and the show opens June 16th, 2012, and runs through August 12th. More information as we get closer, but this is a must-see.
So after a long and interesting afternoon the show pieces were chosen…
and we went off to the Wave Crest Inn for a dinner cooked by R & D’s friend Hank Johnson. Hank was curator of roses for the Portland rose garden and upon retirement bought and restored the wonderful Wave Crest Inn…
and if you need a get-away to the beach let me recommend this place…it’s a B&B, no dinners, but sooo cozy and…well…perfect…and affordable. Hank had been coming here for years for R&R and when he neared retirement and the owners were elderly, he decided to buy it and continue a tradition. He has slowly redone the interior and it “wraps its arms around you”…
with a terrific kitchen…
and Hank did us oysters on a sizzling-hot salt block (this was VERY fun)
between bites Diane played ragtime on the piano…
and before we left town Rex and Diane donated several very nice Dorathy Bruce paintings to the museum, including this one…
all in all pretty much a perfect way to launch February…
On The Way 
Looks like a good time and very interesting about all of the collages. I used to have a thermometer like the one in the first photo for Rex’s new studio. Such great finds!
Such an interesting site. I will definitely need to ask Hank about the salt block and cooking oysters upon it!!! Looks fantastic!