Derek Hess is a Cleveland-based artist who is a master of manipulating your eyes, making them see drawings and paintings that are simultaneously beautiful, twisted, engaging and frightening. His pieces range from sparse to intensely intricate, but they often focus on a single character or figure, who often seems broken in some way - externally or internally.
Most of the art Hess does starts with a pencil. Stark lines are splayed rudely across a fresh white terrain producing frustrated demons, skanky temptresses and disheveled heroes.
"I try to get on an emotional and sometimes spiritual level, a kinda core feeling that everyone can relate too," Hess says.

Oftentimes Hess says he exaggerates certain body parts of his figures - usually the head or heart - to draw attention to those areas, hopefully allowing viewers to see something they can relate to. In his newest batch of fine art prints Hess has been drawing figures, then burning holes in the paper where the heart is. It's what is intriguing him right now, but it's not really how he started.

He studied figure drawing and printmaking at the Cleveland Institute of Art in the early 1990s and found his way to working with the music industry while he was setting up concerts at a local venue.
Hess began gaining acclaim for his concert posters for the now defunct Euclid Tavern in Cleveland around 1993. It was at the club that Hess started a slow snowball of success, he says.
"Opportunities would present themselves, from doing footwork, and I would just, kinda, take advantage of them"

A lot of bands that Hess enjoyed - like Helmet, Jesus Lizard and Cop Shoot Cop - were not performing in Cleveland because the concert venue owners weren't treating bands very well, he says. When he got an opportunity to book shows at the Euclid Tavern he relished the chance and made sure to pay the bands what they deserved and deal with them honestly and on the level. The reputation he earned for being a good promoter, and for the outstanding posters he drew, gave Hess the opportunity to work with bands doing their CD cover art and more.

Concert posters from Hess can be found on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Louvre in Paris. For the final Snapcase show Hess drew a poster - his only one in the last year - and he has been talking posters a lot since he was part of the CMJ Fest in Cleveland, poster display at the Rock and Roll Hall of fame and was featured in the book "The Art of Modern Rock" - www.artofmodernrock.com - and several poster gallery shows for that.
However, Hess doesn't do a lot of posters anymore. The poster work led to art on CD covers for bands like Converge, R.L. Burnside, Tommy Lee and Above This Fire, and now Hess and his business partner own Strhess Clothing.

Strhess began a little less than 2 years ago, Hess says, and they have about 60 designs for shirts, with a new line coming out. Each shirt has an original Derek Hess drawing on it, but the black line drawings are given to different graphic designers and ad firms to put the shirt together, so the designs stay fresh, Hess says.

The shirts can all be found online at www.strhessclothing.com, and the Strhess Clothing tour is going on right now. Featured bands on the tour are Zao, Bleeding Through, Misery Signals and Fight Paris, and clothing from Strhess will definitely be available, check out www.strhesstour.com for more info on that.

Hess says he may also be part of organizing a music/art tour with contemporary emo and hardcore bands in the near future. For several years Hess and partners have organized such a festival in Cleveland, and once in Austin, and it is possible it may go on tour, he says. The tour would be made up of bands that Hess likes and "artists that matter," he says.

"Artists that I think are really hot right now are "Bask" and "Tes One. And the Asterik Studio in Seattle You pick up a CD cover and it's good and chances are they did it." In the music realm Hess recommends He is Legend, Code Seven and With Honor. Although, the first CD Hess ever bought was not quite along those lines. "It was Kiss "Destroyer," Hess says. He also remembers the first piece of art he purchased was a photograph of a steel mill in Cleveland that he bought for $300 at an art gallery in Little Italy in Cleveland.

Nowadays people are buying art from Derek Hess though. He is living as an artist and continuing to work occasionally on posters and CD artwork - he also did some covers for Marvel Comics Captain America - while devoting much of his time to Strhess Clothing and setting up gallery exhibits for his new work. You can find out exactly what he is up to by checking out www.derekhess.com.

Information about Ales "Bask" Hostomsky and Leon "Tes One" Bedore - can be found at www.13hundred.com, where they have their latest exhibits.
Asterik Studio can be found at www.asterikstudio.com/about.php

interview by: Mike Hammer