Some people know what they want to be when they grow up. And then there’re people like New York City’s Heath McClain.

For McClain, a Vinemont High School graduate who’s now Art Director for History channel’s competitive blade-smithing series Forged In Fire, growing into a unique, challenging, and fulfilling artistic role— a role many would covet and one that never fails as a conversation starter whenever he’s back home — wasn’t so much a case of making good on a childhood promise. Instead, it was a case of art finding him. After all, his Cullman County roots sound pretty typical.

Growing up locally, “I was always falling off of stuff,” laughs McClain, “wrecking my dirt bike and jumping out of trees. I wasn’t really your quintessential artist type.” Raised on a small Vinemont farm, McClain was rough-and-tumble like most boys his age. But regardless of any preconceived stigmas about an artist’s life, McClain always knew he had the bug. “I just couldn’t get enough of pen and paper. I loved to draw. From the time I was in the first grade, I had become known as the ‘artist kid.’” 

After graduating from Vinemont, McClain hadn’t answered his true calling. With some early post-high school prospects not quite materializing in the world of colligate football, McClain instead packed his things and moved to North Carolina, where he spent a season as a whitewater rafting guide. 

“I didn’t really have any idea what I wanted to do with life, but at the time I thought I wanted to play football — so I moved to Huntsville with hopes to walk on at UAH,” says McClain. But when football didn’t pan out, McClain ended up at Wallace State Community College on an acting scholarship; one he says he only “accidentally” auditioned for. “With all my theatre classes, I ended up in loads of art ones, and that’s when I decided I wanted to spend the rest of my life making art.

“My original plan was to become a professor and teach other people how to make art — so I thought I’d better go to grad school,” he recalls. But with his new trajectory set, McClain graduated from Wallace, packed his things yet again, and headed out across the country for Portland State University — pencils and clay in hand. 

“I ended up getting kicked out before the semester even began,” he jokes, “so I spent the better part of a year in Portland just searching. I realize now that I was searching for New York.” 

McClain’s Portland stay, however, wasn’t all for lost. In fact, his tales from the City of Roses warrant their own cover story. “I could talk about my time in Portland until the sun comes up,” he says. “But in brief, I ended up living in a halfway house in a room vacated because the previous tenant was murdered. My best friend — and roommate — was an underground movie star from the ‘80s.

“One day out of the blue my cousin called and offered me a room and a job at his place in Brooklyn. I packed all of my stuff and left Portland four days later. I moved to New York with a pointed goal and purpose — to be an art director for someone, somehow.”

Starting out in the Big Apple, McClain’s story is similar to most tales of small-town to big-city journeys: working odd jobs and talking to anyone who would listen about his passion. Eventually, his ideas landed on some of the right ears. “When I first moved, I snagged a job working at a farmers’ market. I also worked freelance loading trucks for film companies,” he recalls. “I used every spare second I had to talk to somebody about my art.” 

After tons of truckloads and a strained back or two, McClain finally had that fateful encounter when he ended up saying the right thing to the right guy. “I don’t even really know how it happened, to be honest with you. Shane Glover was the Art Director for FF [Forged in Fire], and he just kind of took me under his wing. But that’s how it works here in the city. Everybody just helps everybody — everyone has something to offer.”

Now located in Tarrytown, New York — only a brief thirty-minute train ride from Manhattan — McClain is now the Arts Director for the popular History channel series, and spends his days crafting just about every on-screen detail (with the exception of the weapons made by the competitors themselves). 

“The best part about my job is that it informs my art,” he says. “Every day I get to work with new materials and exercise my creativity and ingenuity to put forth things that satisfy myself and the demands of the TV world.  It challenges me to push myself and create things otherwise outside of my comfort zone — like this torch,” gesturing toward a drawing on a page of his worn sketchbook.

In the fall of 2019, McClain was commissioned by the Cullman City Parks and Recreation department to design and build a sculpture that would serve as the centerpiece for the city’s newly-renovated Art Park. “The only parameter I was given was that it needed to be seen from the road and made of metal,” he says. “The rest was left to me, which is honestly a dream gig.” 

McClain wanted to create a piece that anyone could feel a connection to—  a piece that, in his words, could “bring the community together.”

For the arduous task, McClain drew from a deeply personal, close-to-home well of inspiration: his family. “My grandfather was a farmer,” he says. “Some of my fondest memories from childhood were spent out in the fields with Papaw on a rainy day. When the rains got too heavy, he’d take me into town and we’d go get flattops at East Side Barber Shop and then head to the Busy Bee for lunch. You know these guys are larger than life when you’re a kid — and even more so now in 2020. So that’s the spirit I wanted to evoke with my piece.”

Somewhere on the distant other side of all the bustle and beauty of the New York art world, McClain says he has one more, seemingly simple dream. “I’d love to move back home to Cullman one day,” he muses. “My family has some beautiful land that has been in our family for generations. That’s where I want to settle down. It’s my home.”