Orchids by Spencer Young

“Flowers” by Spencer Young will be featured throughout August in River City Art Association’s Artist of the Month gallery in the Vigo County Public Library at Seventh and Poplar streets in Terre Haute.

Young, born in the late-1940s, grew up in LaGrange, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, where photography was his main hobby and first job. He was a photographer for his high school yearbook for four years and worked part time as darkroom assistant for a local press photographer.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from Iowa State. “I worked summers for several local photographers,” he said.

“By the early 70’s, it became obvious that no jobs were to be had in astronomy, so I fell back on my only marketable skill, working several years for a portrait and wedding studio. Not wanting to make a career of this, I taught myself geology in my spare time, with the intention of entering the coal business.”

Until 2000, he worked as a geologist for small coal mining companies and a stone quarry, in which he became a stockholder.

After retiring that year, Young has become, he said, “a full-time amateur landscape photographer, printing digitally. In 2014 I started making digital art (CAD drawings and fractal flames). My artistic hero is Ansel Adams.”

Young, who lives in Clinton, Indiana, also is an astronomy aficionado and has traveled to view and photograph nine total solar eclipses in countries such as Australia, Turkey and China. He also has viewed two Transits of Venus and Aurora Borealis twice.

Young’s most recent honor is an Honorable Mention in the Annual Midwest Photography Juried Exhibition on view now through Aug. 26 in Paris Art Center and Museum at Paris, Ill.

His “Flowers” will be showcased again in September in the RCAA Artist of the Month gallery in Harrison College.

River City Art Association meets at 6 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month in the VCPL. For details on RCAA membership contact officers Todd Stokes at 812-232-0048 or Mike Bender at 812-251-7724.