Heather McClellan

From her earliest years, Heather's interests have been all things art, with her middle school and high school years centered on her artistic development. Upon graduation from high school, she attended Utah Valley State College where she found many opportunities open to her. At the end of her first semester, the fine art department was so impressed with her skills that she was asked to join them, teaching three basic drawing courses. She also joined the newspaper staff as the layout designer, learning many skills that soon proved useful.

The children's educational paper State Studies Weekly was at the time transitioning from a small, ten-state operation to a national offering of products, and Heather was brought in as the layout designer and chief illustrator. In one year she completed dozens of annually re-produced papers containing hundreds of her own illustrations. But Heather's ambitions were greater, and she left Utah Valley State College after only two semesters. Seeking a more formal and rigorous art training, she transferred into the illustration and graphic design department of the Cleveland Institute of Art, accepting the school's most generous transfer student scholarship and coming in as a 3rd-year student in their 5-year program.

During the spring of 2003 Heather concluded her thesis work, which includes two Mormon history series. The first is a series of eight scratchboard drawings depicting buildings of historic interest to Mormons in the Greater Cleveland area; the second is a four-part series depicting the tarring and feathering of the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. Both series were presented at the annual Mormon History Association that year: the drawings as retail prints and the tarring and feathering as a featured artist.

While attending school, Heather accepted two other teaching positions one with Rainey Institute, an art appreciation foundation for inner city children K-12. Fuchs Mizrachi, a Jewish middle school in University Heights OH. The school had never had an art program, so Heather was responsible for designing the curriculum as she taught it. She included photography, pottery, paints, ceramics, and large-space projects memorializing the Holocaust. She taught for two years and loved every minute.

It was during this time also that Heather began her relationship with Learning Horizons, a children's education department within American Greetings. In the years since, she has managed the development of more than a dozen workbooks; she also provides illustrations from time to time.

Heather is now working on a second series of scratchboard drawings, this one of Nauvoo, Illinois sites.