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Strhessed Lines interview with D e r e k H e s s by Nathan Thorin On March 30, Derek Hess brought his crate into town. He was carrying only one crate of art this time around, and he thanked God he didn't have to travel with two again. His last stop was Oklahoma City. His current destination was Ames Prosperes gallery in San Marco. Hailing from Cleveland and Detroit, Derek Hess has begun to be recognized worldwide for his scratchy figurative line sketches and printmaking. Both an artist and an artisan, Derek is equal parts music buff and craftsman. His style evokes movement and a range of emotions from angst to whimsy. If you know it or not, you've probably seen at least one of his concert posters, each one a piece of art in its own right. Derek's done subjects from angels to electric Frankensteins and has shown his concert and fine art prints everywhere from Seattle to Germany. Derek adds with a bit of a laugh, "Yeah. The Germans seem to like this imagery." Once Ames Prosperes, he unpacked and hung the crate's contents. The show had begun to take form. Right around that time, he stopped and took a few moments to tell us more about how the flyer network helped launch his career, and why the tips of his fingers inspired him. So what got you started? Was it your concert posters, or did your interest in art begin before that? "Well, it was hand in hand. It was music, art, all the way back down the line. I guess art before music, if you want to go back to four years old. If you want to go that far back on the timeline. But I got into the concert poster stuff when I was booking a club [Euclid Tavern] in Cleveland. I was booking...and I was studying printmaking at the time so they kind of meshed. At first I was doing flyers, obviously, and by doing the flyers it started a way for me to develop the way pages should be laid out, and what works and doesn't work very inexpensively because it was a flyer. What type works, how to promote the club. You knew what the date was, what the venue was, and how the image interacted with the whole piece. By doing a lot of those also, it was a spinoff that wasn't intentional, by saturating the market in the Cleveland area with the flyers the art became recognizable. It was associated with the club. Then it was associated with me. So people would see the flyer and the drawing and go, 'Oh, that's for Euclid Tavern. What is it?' And the other idea of a flyer is so that they would be cool enough for people to pick them up, take them home, hang them on their refrigerators. You know? Hopefully then they'll see it before the gig and come on down. These shows were mine, I was responsible for everything from signing the contracts, to making sure they're fed, to making sure they're on-time, they have their beer, and making sure they're paid. So when I lost money it came out of my pocket. So it was important to sell the show." So it really allowed you to hone your skills. "Yeah. I was paying for my bands out of my pocket, so I was losing a lot of money. You shouldn't book shows if you're a fan. ::laughter:: Really. So along came my business partner, who now manages me, or represents me, or whatever. He moved to Cleveland from Texas, and they had a pretty solid poster scene going on down there via Kozik. He had already seen my flyers. They had made it there, through the trickle down. They have this weird collecting poster, flyer network there...subculture." In Texas? "Not just there, everywhere. It's not huge but they swap handbills, and find out about the newest guy. It's silly stuff, it's very cool though. And He knew about me so when he moved to Cleveland he tracked me down. He asked me why I wasn't doing posters, and I basically told him I couldn't afford too. So he suggested that if he could come up with the bank we should try out posters, and split the profits and go from there. And we've been working together ever since. That was in '93. So that's how I got into concert posters. ...I was studying lithography and I didn't know silk-screening. So I didn't have any preconceived ways, or I wasn't taught how to approach silk-screening, which is like when little kids draw they're like really fresh, and if you start teaching little kids how to draw or how they should draw, they lose this...whatever this is. So it was nice. I went into silk-screening without knowing silk-screening. I approached it more like a litho, and approached with trying to get more like a lithography look. So that's where I went from there. And obviously I went a lot into anatomy drawing, a lot of model work." Yeah, I can see that. The concert posters are like pieces unto themselves. "Yeah. That's the idea! Everything I do is figurative. So yeah, it's an advertising piece, but I also believe it's something further. And before I was doing the concert posters I was obviously doing lithography, because I was still in school and I had access to the litho department. And also, you go back further, I had screwed around a lot basically and once I decided to take responsibility for myself and my actions, and so on and so forth, and develop this talent instead of just coasting on it. So I was able to really focus in on print and that was it; I was working 'till midnight until they kicked me out of the print department. So I had this body of images, prints that I couldn't really get an audience for. Although a gallery in town had picked me up and put me in a group show and it sparked, it opened a few eyes slightly but it wasn't selling anything. So I kind of had to put that away when I started booking shows and doing concert posters. And now, or a couple years ago, I'm at the point that I've developed an audience through the concert posters and now I can go back into that imagery and have an audience already made. You go into it cold, like a lot of artists do, it's extremely tough, you'll be a starving artist. You go to New York or somewhere and you just do your paintings, how are you going to get somebody to look at it?" Yeah, it's hard to get that recognition factor between your name and your style. "Right. Which again, it wasn't a goal at the start of it, but I feel very fortunate that it went that way. So I can kind pull away from doing concert posters quite as much. Although I haven't done any fine arts stuff this year because I've been too busy, and I need inspiration anyhow." Where does your inspiration come from? "Inspiration? Who knows. Bad relationship was the last one. So I'm not in one right now, everything's good. ::laughter:: Emotionally anyhow. So I need to find another relationship or just give up fine art printmaking. I'll find something, or it will find me. Things will suck again. ::laughter:: All kidding aside, you tend to learn from everything. Hopefully I'll take whatever lessons I've learned from that and apply it to whatever comes next and that will be the direction I'll go in my next fine art piece. Unless I didn't learn. Then my stuff will just become repetitive and I don't want that." Where do you draw your imagery from. I've noticed a lot of angels... "Well, over the years I've developed my visual vocabulary. And the angels generally represent a spiritual disconnection that the western world has. Very much a materialistic, three-dimensional kind of culture we're in. And, you know, I'm as guilty as the next person and there's more going on than the surface thing that we see. So that's what the angels generally represent. You know, people are like, 'Are they Christian? Why are you messing with these religious things?' And I don't really think I am. I think most of them are trying to speak to the figure, and the figures are tuned out, they're ignoring them. That's the general idea." I was doing cut-up arms, starting with the fingers. Again this is kind of a relationship thing. It's really weird. When I'm hurting emotionally, it starts in the tips of my fingers. I mean it's a physical pain, and it's dull, it's not a sharp pain ... like heart attack. It's a constant, I'm feeling it in the tips, it goes like this (taps his fingertips) and then if it gets worse it goes up my arm. I've spoken to some people about it and they're like, 'Well that's really strange, because that's like your connection.' Because I draw through my hand. So that's why a lot of the fine art series are cut. The first one is "Deeper The Wounds," and in the very finish one "Addressing The Wounds" you're addressing your issues, you're addressing whatever the fuck is wrong with you, why you let yourself get in that situation. And you're dealing with your wounds from the relationship, and his hands are bandaged." There seems to be a lot of detail in the prints. How do you achieve that look? "Again, going in cold to screenprinting, without ever having training to use that medium I went into it with the litho training trying to mimic the way a litho would work. And the nice thing about it being on photographic paper is that you can take an Exacto blade and scratch off the surface. You can get that scratching that you can get with lithography. Because with litho you work on stone, you can scratch it. The new ones, I'm working real loosely I'm just using my finger going right into it. You can see my fingerprints. That's kind of my roots on how I learned to approach things. Now it's just kind of become it's own animal. You know, like most artists, you just learn from each piece and roll on. So it's kind of rolling on, to wherever it's going I don't know. Hopefully somewhere." Right, so that's life isn't it? Hopefully it's going somewhere. I suppose we'll worry about it when we get there. "Yeah! ::laughter:: Where is that final stop?" Derek's greatest repeat audience has been in the Cleveland and Detroit area that he has lived in, but his web site ( www.derekhess.com ) sends the greatest amount of its prints to the West coast. We wrapped up so Derek could prepare for his show. It was time to put the crate out of sight and shop for some music to set the mood. Do yourself a favor and check out the show while it's still up in Jacksonville. |
