Dodo Head by Spencer Young

Spencer Young will rock the Vigo County Public Library in June.

The Clinton, Indiana resident will display his photographic works in River City Art Association’s Artist of the Month gallery space in the library at Seventh and Poplar streets in Terre Haute.

His theme — rocks, including this one titled “Dodo Head.”

Now look again at the image and you’ll understand the title. As a former geologist, Spencer is intrigued by (pareidolia) faces and other images created naturally in the layers and colors in rock formations.

Spencer is one of RCAA’s most prolific photographers and has been honored many times at exhibitions in Indiana and Illinois. In August 2018 he received a Second Place, an Honorable Mention, and the coveted Paris Bridge Club Choice Award at the Annual Midwest Photography Juried Exhibition in the Paris Bicentennial Art Center and Museum in Paris, Illinois. In August 2016, his fractal flame abstracts that he created using algorithm software were featured in the Math Department at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Spencer, 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, Spencer became, 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.”

Spencer 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.

RCAA membership is open to any artist age 18 and older. The group meets on the second Tuesday of each month unless otherwise noted in the Vigo County Public Library. For more details, call past president Todd Stokes at 812-232-0048.