Block print artist Randy Radock is in the spotlight in the Featured Artist Room at the Harbor Art Gallery, 114 N. Laurel St., Port Angeles during the months of July and August.
The gallery’s operating hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Community members are invited to meet the artist on July 21-22 and Aug. 4-5 during opening hours.
Radock is a member of the Olympic Peninsula Art Association and Port Ludlow Art League, and now has his art hanging in the Harbor Art Gallery and the Elwha Klallam Heritage Center in Port Angeles. He also welcomes visitors to his Sequim studio by appointment.
Radock said his interest in art started by age 10 or 11.
”In the 1940s and ’50s, advertisers would use match book covers to send out their message. I would find the match book covers that had all kinds of images on them and said ‘Draw Me’, draw the image and send it off hoping to win a $595 to $795 Commercial Art Course,” Radock said. “Needless to say I never won and went on to school as usual never taking an art course in either high school or college.”
“First Nations Mask II” by Randy Radock
After retiring as a construction manger for an international corporation, Radock discovered free art classes provided by Seniors Making Art, started by Dale Chihuly in 1991 to provide free, eight-week art classes to senior citizens. In 1998 he took a Sumi painting class and then decided he needed to learn how to draw, so then he took a drawing class and a block printing class.
“After the first block printing class my instructor said I should take the next level printing class and that is when I really developed my interest in the art of block printing,” Radock said.
“I find that printing on papyrus, tapa, slate and handmade paper collected from around the world during my travels gives my art a different and unique dimension and thus each print is an original in its series.”
Radock’s art has hung in the Washington State Lieutenant Governor’s Reception Hall, a National Park Service lodge, an art center in Michigan, along with galleries, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, banks and civic centers in Washington state.
