I received an
e-mail from Laura (Dyer) Avitt, an Indianola chiropractor who is also
an Indianola High School alum, class of '96. Some of you may have seen
this. While watching the Olympics, she saw a US Cellular TV commercial
that had a ceramicist named Heather who makes ceramic drums on the
potter’s wheel and then raku fires them. Laura went on to say that she
didn’t notice at first until a classmate pointed out that it is 1996
Indianola alum Heather McQueen.I hadn’t seen the commercial but was
ecstatic because Heather was one of my best ceramics students back in
the 1990s. She was a student of mine in several art classes but she
really loved ceramics. I got on the Internet and checked out YouTube to
find the commercial and also found her FaceBook page and contacted her.
You can see the commercial on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxqOqfULGHE.You’re
probably wondering what raku firing is. Originating in the Japanese tea
ceremony and then the process being Americanized in the 1960s, raku is
a method of firing where the pots are removed from the kiln while
glowing hot and are placed in a garbage can with combustibles such as
leaves, sawdust or newspapers and then covered. The fire burns the
oxygen producing carbon that produces beautiful and unpredictable glaze
results.After graduating from Indianola High School, Heather spent
a year at the University of Iowa and then graduated from the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago. She spent four years in England and then
returned to Chicago.
Heather, along with her husband, Quentin, moved
into a two-story building in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago
and are in the process of setting up a new studio space in a
1,000-square-foot storefront. When I asked about the commercial
she wrote to me and said, "It was just me taking a chance: I saw an
audition call posted on a job board last fall, and all I did was write
in and tell them my story. After taking a hit over the summer doing art
fairs and not selling much, I was searching for other projects to bring
in a bit of cash. They were looking for 'real people’ who had
'interesting and unusual jobs and hobbies.’ Across the board, that’s me
- the raku was only a start. (There’s the ceramic drum making,
drumming, study trips to Morocco every few years, oh and don’t forget
cave exploring). "What a wild ride!” she said. "I went and did two
screen tests, the second being in front of a panel of 10 people
including writers, directors and representatives from US Cellular.” A
location scout visited her studio, and that was that. The filming was
last September and took about 3 1/2 hours with a crew of about 40
people, in several RVs and vans."The timing of the commercial’s
release couldn’t have been better,” she said. "The demand for my work
has soared through the roof, and I’m scrambling to get all of my
equipment installed so I can get back to work! It’s an incredibly good
momentum for the start of a new business.” You can check out her
business Web site at www.drumfacechicago.com.
"I got the honor of being a pseudo-Olympian,” she said, "because it
ran during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games. They just told me it’s
going to run during 'American Idol,’ too!”Part of the commercial
includes the appearance of a phone number on the screen, which people
are invited to call to see that she’s a real person and promote that
all of the US Cellular phone plans feature free incoming calls."I
get just under 300 phone calls a day on that phone, of which I answer
about 90 calls. Half of those are hang-ups, so I’m talking to roughly
40 people a day, from all over the country. The potential of future
work keeps me interested in doing it and I even listen to all the
voicemails and try to return calls to people who sound like they’re
sincerely interested in knowing more about what I’m doing.”It’s so
exciting to hear from former students and to see them doing what you
know they really love. When high schools around the country start
cutting back programs because of budget cuts it’s important to remember
that the core subjects are the basis for education but it’s the
electives that eventually define a person.
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