Our Second Acts feature is proof that it’s never too late to find success in entirely new ventures. These stories celebrate individuals who discovered purpose and fulfillment in the later chapters of life.

Spencer Frazer has enjoyed one of the most colorful careers imaginable.

After graduating from UCLA, he performed top secret research for the Department of Defense, working on radar surfaces and nuclear controls. Six years after that, he founded SOG Specialty Knives and Tools, where he designed innovative knives, tools, and gear for the outdoor, military, law enforcement, and general marketplace.

Today, he’s an internationally acclaimed, award-winning, self-taught environmental artist whose work has been seen by millions worldwide. He’s won a spot in the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition in New York; captured first, second, and fourth place in the 2023 American Art Awards; was showcased in the 2023 International Artists in Embassies Exhibit; and recently completed a six-month solo show at New York’s acclaimed Roger Tory Peterson Museum. He has also been featured on the Times Square Billboard.

Closer to home, he served as artist in residence at Seattle’s ArtsFund, one of the top arts organizations in the Pacific Northwest, and recently completed a six-month show at a gallery in Seattle’s Madison Park neighborhood, where he lives. His art was even featured at one of President Joe Biden’s campaign events on Greenpeace Day in 2022.

Oh, and Frazer is also a master Japanese aesthetic pruner and garden builder.

“I’ve learned along the way that you can’t be everything to everyone,” he says. “You have to pick a lane.”

Cruel Oil by Spencer Frazer

Image courtesy of the artist, © Kakuko Ishii

That lane now centers around environmental awareness. His art is an intriguing blend of his scientific background and passion for nature. In his early days as an artist, he was more focused on Japanese gardens, but “this voice would kind of come through the work, and it kept speaking to me (how) man’s affecting nature and nature’s affecting man. I was having this dialogue with myself all the time, and the more I had these conversations, the more I realized that was what the work should be about. Then I got strategic about it, and that’s where we are today.”

His art, he says, was first shaped by his knife company, which in turn was influenced by his undercover work. SOG stands for “Special Operations Group,” and he was keenly interested in collecting Vietnam-era war memorabilia. The hand-silkscreened, custom artistic fabric uniforms in particular fascinated him, with their tiger stripes and triple canopy designs.

“I look back on all the different influences I had in terms of my art career,” he says, “and this is definitely one of them.” He operated the knife company until 2021, when he sold it to GSM Outdoors.

As for his art, he says friends thought it was the “cat’s meow” when he was featured on the Times Square Billboard, though he notes that it lasted for only 30 seconds. He’s particularly proud that his work — “a stream of consciousness that shows all the animals” — was included in the U.S. Government’s Fifth National Climate Assessment, published last year.

“That’s read by over a million people,” Frazer notes. “And not only that, but it is the bible of climate studies. When they told me (that) I started shaking.”

Spencer Frazer has already had three significant careers. He’s now in his 70s, but don’t bet that he’s finished.

Want to hear more about Frazer’s remarkable journey? Tune into our podcast for an in-depth conversation about his adventures and artistic evolution.