Forced Perspective: The Art and Life of Derek Hess | Perspective

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] bad relationships are good inspiration a lot of the the broken heart songs throughout history are the ones that were the top hits because people got it you know they understood it's a core human feeling i shot for you know not you know well she did this to me so i hate her because of that or i hate me because i couldn't handle this or whatever i got down to the essence feeling of what that is what got me there doesn't really matter as for the the visual for the the viewer it's just i'm there and they relate to that too because what got them there was their own history their own story but they related to their that's why a lot of my artwork has been successful because it's a it's a common thread amongst us all so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Applause] [Laughter] [Music] derek hess pours his heart and soul and even some of his own blood into his art self-expression as catharsis his work evokes his struggles and pain in every sense known around the world for his concert posters his art hangs at the rock and roll hall of fame in cleveland and the louvre in paris and the only emotions he'll claim are his own and he's willing to share them with the world you know what gets me to there is my trip you know someone else is there from something else someone may be bipolar too or whatever but what's there is what everybody's relating to you know and so yeah my my trip you know goes through alcoholism being sober bipolar being high low whatever in trouble not in trouble good relationship bad relationship whatever you know and everybody's got whatever i don't expect oh for derek he's got whatever if i almost spit it out i don't think you got to suffer to be an artist but i you definitely have to feel [Music] well dad was a professor at the cleveland institute of art and it was he was the head of the industrial design department so he noticed that i had a knack for you know drawing a raw talent as a little kid so he encouraged it and it was a positive reinforcement encouragement dad was a really good teacher you know he took that teaching skill from college all the way down to a three three-year-old the one always comes to mind is the gil kane forced perspective idea that i would have my comic books all over and i remember distinctly it was captain marvel number 17 and gil kane did the art and gil kane was notorious for doing shots up the nose i thought they were cool but i didn't understand them and i would go to dad i'm like dad well you know why is he doing this you know and no first he says that's perspective i'm like perspective he goes well that means you know you're looking at an object part of it's closer to you and another part is further away from you and you can't see the points in between but you know that it works and i'm like really you know and he's like well that's forced perspective because he's really pushing the idea and yet he's pulling it off and i remember him telling me all about that one day in the backyard on the picnic table you know derek and i were always really really close really when i mean i was thrilled when he was born they brought him home i was just thrilled so i was kind of like a second mom very artistic like from the beginning always drawing and they recognized it really early i guess with my dad being an artist it was easy to pick up on so he was always just so encouraging and supportive of derek from the get-go [Music] that was awesome he was a world war ii vet so he also supported my interest in world war ii military machine you know like tanks and planes he was a pilot for p26 [Music] [Applause] this is old school russian folk music sheet music polar bear and a t-62 unfortunately i'm unique in some ways because i you know was taught correctly i had several other instructors who were vets of world war ii uh drawing instructors and the work ethic that these guys had was very impressive i mean they came up through the depression things were different obviously i found that you know they had to learn how to draw in art school before they moved on to something else it was regimented learning the the anatomy and where nowadays you know what's the matter with kids today yeah well i grabbed a few of the uh my better gill canes uh because gil kane is hands down the biggest influence is as far as composition and drawing goes in my work not so much content because gil kane was a comic book artist but the way he handled and grasped the figure and the way he composed the page is as far as i'm concerned genius here's a couple examples of his fourth perspective and this is i mean one you know obvious forced perspective drawing the hand larger larger than life and and it's kind of ironic because the atom is a little superhero then by making the hand that much more larger than the atom just you know emphasizes the the whole kind of a pond going on here that people may not pick up on and then again each finger flowing separately then you know but then creating the entire hole in the early 70s it was called window boxing and that's where they would lay out color and the type whatever the information was on the comic book this case being our iron man and then they would break out of the figure i mean the figure out of the window which made the figure look larger than life which is a visual technique that i've taken to many many many of my concert posters it's just one of those tricks you know and it works you know here's another one i love this cover i love this cover you know it's a no big deal this is one of those covers that you know it just feels good to look at you don't have to know why but i can tell you why this hand again all the fingers moving separately creating one hand though i love the way he drew the the shoulder muscles and looking towards the stingray stingray looking towards the submariner and uh the hand and again him holding his father this just brings you around and around and around and you don't leave the storyline except to break the border and become larger than life roy was he was like the square peg in the world of round holes and appreciated for that so ultimately roy was an applied artist it wasn't just creating for the sake of creating it was meeting a client's needs that's that's to me where derek hit his stride derek's technique when when i was watching him 20 years ago was do a drawing go into the stat room photograph it then pull it out spray paint to get a splatter technique ruby lift to block out colors like layer after layer of this really intricate technique to get something that looked really loose and really dynamic so the end result was a lot different a microwave transmitter versus a figure in action but the way that they would get there there really was a technique and a process to get there he's so dumb we do this all day ron like i feel like there's a succession with artists from the renaissance period from that where sort of the greats talk to next race well here you know here this is uh something was told to me by my dad's partner hugh greenlee and he is like you know the beginning of the end of realistic drawing was with the invention of the camera because it when that camera came out no longer people had to draw representationally of something that happened as a current event for a newspaper a camera can do that you know so right then it started to slip away the discipline and uh but it freed you up to do more explore you know more expressive types of drawing so it's good and bad but that was the beginning of the end where these three paintings are my three children they pose for me in the summer after their first year of college [Music] the first day that i had him in class i knew right away that i had a very gifted student my system or my way of teaching seemed to be exactly what he needed he he already had the the beginnings of the style that today we know so well and enjoy so much and i didn't want to interfere with it in fact i encourage him because i don't think that a teacher should impose a technique or a style that is a natural thing that every artist has of his own it has to come very from inside so i let him draw the way he felt one of my instructors that i owe a lot was robert brackman a great portrait painter he made me paint with see to see color and to paint with color like the impressionists and i was all inspired by by his teaching so when i came back the first painting i did was my self-portrait and that's it a little heavier and i had more hair than i have now after a year or so when i began to see his posters for the euclid tavern i was very impressed how much he had progressed since he was in my class but still the ideas and the concepts that i tried to instill in him were there i i had many students that are very talented and never amounted to anything because letting of that desire and that dedication that derek has derek lives for his art is one of the great ones well with withdrawing the figure like i was saying that when i i kind of got caught up in the head because that's all that mattered in that drawing but uh you want to lay down as much as a figure as you can as quickly as you can and generally that's with your your center line and then the top of the ribcage your clavicles always go this way and the hip bones always go the other direction so you get that down right you're right you're halfway there and so then that means this leg would be up and then bend slightly at the knee and this one will be bent [Applause] so you correct it too as you go and this one will be bent like that how do you know if you got something right or not what kind of training do you need do you need to understand the training you know it varies from person to person it really means how well you can look at something and you learn to look at it you know people have a knack to look at things and not have instructive construction um i needed instruction i understood it and i grasped it and i kind of ran with it but it's it's called landmarks when you're drawing you know you've got to look like see the elbow is right here and so that's going to affect what's on this side of the body if i stayed here and [ __ ] with this elbow and [ __ ] with it and took it all of a sudden i wouldn't be able to fix this side because i wasn't working at all at the same time so that you keep checking back at your landmarks not so much lebron but he falls in that category lebron and michael jordan obviously have a gift and they it came easy for them right it came naturally to start swishing it and doing whatever they do and uh i it came easy for me and like in my early days like i i knew better than everybody else and also i was you know i was out of control drunk maniac kid i was a lot of trouble and i would go to drawing class and i'd be like i do my drawing i'm like wow that's pretty good you know i knew it was good then you'd always walk around and look at everybody else's drawings and i'm like yeah well you know i you know i i got you all beat you know this is cool i'll see you in five weeks you know because i'll drink it and then i'd come back in five weeks i'd sit down and i draw and i draw it just as good as i did the time before and i make them walk around and i say wow you know these people have applied themselves you know they're getting better you know maybe i should i'll see in five weeks but but that's when i recognize that they may not have been the as gifted as far as you know michael jordan goes you know i'm not saying i'm michael jordan all right but uh they may not have that you know natural uh gift for you know grasping the figure but they apply themselves and therefore it doesn't matter i mean you can learn to draw if you want to apply yourself and if you want to learn and some people comes more naturally than others but it doesn't really matter you know in the in the big scheme of things michael jordan is the derek basketball yes i might mark price eighth grade ninth grade with my buddies core group of friends we started drinking and it goes back to depression and bipolar you know all of a sudden i just felt i took that drink i'm like this is perfect you know i'm calm and i didn't put it together until many years later of being sober that you know i was self-medicating and it's funny as when i first started paying attention to music i first started paying attention to beer and then marijuana and everything else my friends had and uh i was having you know i was studying i was dropping out of studying i was feeling i was studying i was paying attention you know but i should have been paying attention the entire time should have i decided i knew what the problem was my problem was you know my environment and my friends who didn't go to college but continued on the same line from high school as i was and so they were a distraction because they weren't going to school they said let's go do this like we used to i'm like absolutely so i decided to move to detroit i have a theory there's been four cities in the last hundred years that i refer to as the great wrong place and living in the great wrong place requires you to express yourself the void that you're living in and i think derek probably absorbed that cleveland's a lot like detroit it's an inspirational city but once again it's the great wrong place illustration for me is the foundation of all great art in terms of representational art and derek is by far the most talented illustrator i've ever known uh derek is a throwback derek is a combination of hard work and innate talent when that talent comes along you better hope picks up a pen and not photoshop [Music] as i understood it he was one of russ keator and russ keator was the legendary painter figurative artist instructor at ccs but he was a task master and i look at derek as probably his greatest his greatest student the guy who anatomy was everything he would take them to the morgue to do life studies a lot of people couldn't handle that i think he took what keter taught better than a lot of the artists that he had there's a lot of famous artists russ keator has taught but i think derek was the de facto keter protege he took what he took it and he amped it up on rock and roll [Music] at the yucca tavern back in the day when i was a handful that was my watering hole that was the place and i knew everybody there you know it's like no arm you know it's like cheers i moved to detroit got it together came back needed employment and the business owners that i knew the best were the eucal tavern owners paul devito bob yost and polly spellbar so i went to them for employment you know into a working man's shot in a beer bar silver asking for a you know job and they gave me the job for chopping chicken legs he used to listen to all these different bands would send them uh promo demos of their music and that and he'd go down there and he'd chop these wings and the people would come up to me in the bar and they'd be going like what the hell is going on downstairs we're having somebody's like loud music and all this banging is going on you know you hear it with the music flaring up and people come in and go what's that going on downstairs that's that's there chopping the wigs for this tuesday we had blues we had the thing we did some punk bands and stuff like that but the the new rack uh alternative and uh yeah i could like to start booking why not and uh actually he was fantastic talking about the before social media before the facebook or before cell phones they started off on mondays then he's doing that he's doing fridays and he was getting these people he was getting people out of state he ran up our phone to so he's doing this now and that's when i first noticed that he did this really wild art and i mean i'll go wow derek he's a really cool band helmet there was a guy with a big helmet on and of course his exaggerated muscles and all that stuff cop shoot cop was another one that did shoot at each other over the donut hey what the hell yeah it's beautiful but uh he in color then he started doing some color and holy [ __ ] this this is really wild when he first started making posters of for bands that he was booking at the tavern there's a few of them let them boost the gallery up in murray hill buffalo daughter get three bands for the price of water he also did the jesus lizard the three days for three days yeah when they were tearing down the stadium i thought we'd have nobody in the place because they had these big concerts downtown and he pat that was sold out all three days yeah david yelled and they were sending him around the room a few times the people [Music] yeah maybe we should have got a bigger room tonight [Music] [Applause] like a lot of the uh the out of town bands didn't realize that you know they're coming to cleveland on a monday night they're thinking this is just some blow-off show to kill time between new york and chicago you're trying to pick up a crummy gig right well sometimes it turned out to be the band's best gig on the whole tour and they had no idea what they were walking into sometimes and i literally would have bands like the places going out of control i mean people flying through the air hanging from the ceiling doing back flips and and sometimes the band's like stop after a couple songs they'd lean over me and say should we stop i mean is it okay i'm like are you kidding this is awesome keep going you know they didn't they didn't realize like this was like mayhem that was sort of under control but i always used to equate the whole process like as if we set a stack of dynamite in the middle of the stage and somebody lit it and then we all decided who would stay the longest [Music] so [Music] for me it was all it was very much a part of sort of the um the possible danger of rock and roll because i think that in the old days like the really old days you know sort of chuck berry kind of stuff there was um an element of danger in there yeah and it was and it was crazy you know the stage was only like whatever six inches high and so there's no real delineation between the audience and the band and it was just mayhem it was a blast that's that's the one for the girls i think that was a club lingerie and um okay there there's the there's the one with the cops you cop and you got the the cops like playing games with each other drinking coffee it's limiting to say that he was a poster artist because he's much more than that [Music] it was a wild west kind of thing you know none of us knew what we were doing we had zero idea what we were doing basically i was living down in texas i was going to school believe it or not there was a collector down there and he told me about this guy who made these black and white flyers up in cleveland ohio and he goes man he goes i don't know who this guy is but these black and white fliers are amazing so we went to the euclid tavern and he introduced me to derek and i said yo man i said your stuff is great i said you should make posters out of this and he's like i got no money and i said well that's okay my dad got me a job at the steel mill i make tons of money right now and so he and derek's like okay let's do it and so we we went ahead and we printed off that first poster and it kind of it exploded from there shut her to think barney bernie was bigger than shutter to think but shuttered to think like what you know kurt cobain you know just shot himself maybe three months prior to this show and i'm like you know i don't care for a shutter to think i was not a big fan of nirvana and i hate pearl jam and i'll bring in that in a second how pearl jam relates to this flyer her cope bane on the halloween of the year that year dressed up like barney for that was his halloween costume then you know then i have barney here committing a copycat suicide which people do people do copycat suicide which is kind of lame they should do their own suicide but that's for another talk and i put the nirvana shirt on burning okay and shudder to think this happened get it um and around him i put kind of a halo around barney's head and it says eddie's just a poser until he pulls the trigger so this uh it was getting calls by parents number one because little kids were seeing this fly you know distributed fliers very well and uh it was upsetting parents because their kids were seeing bernie you know dead and you know so they were calling the euclid and yelling at paul devito um then and you know nirvana fans were on about how insensitive it was and how dare you and uh then it got to pearl jam's management somehow well shuttered to thanks management is was at the time no no no no pearl james management well she got a call from somebody than within their organization i i i thought they were they thought they were managed or they were booked by the same people well what however it worked susan uh from flower booking who i worked with a lot got a call from i was i thought it was pearl jam's management saying is there any way we can get this guy arrested susan wonderful susan her answer was not in this country hung up the phone and and so the show got cancelled and the word on the street was because of its fire that show got shut down and uh we just let that ride you know that's couldn't pay for you know a story like that well i took a and put a dialogue of a psychiatric patient and his doctor and screened it subtly on top be like whispers you know like the voices well the energy of rock and roll doesn't just come from a guitar or the drums it also flows from the pen of one of the world's top poster artists and he lives right here in the cleveland area in this week's rock on cleveland report michael chefsky introduces us to one of the music industry's newest superstars go out with artists welcome to the world of derek hess a world where police shoot each other dead over a donut where techno dinosaurs cast long ominous shadows and where madden and guided by voices become the focus of lithographs prints and posters he's been written up in newsweek and featured in galleries across the country not bad for a guy who just two years ago was pretty much unknown and to this day still helps book acts at the euclid tavern his is a bizarre world with roots right here in his native cleveland i think the clevelanders are more down to earth and it's less less hype as it would be on the coast and so it gives me more of a centered feel towards the work and the people cleveland may not have produced a lot of rock stars but artists are a different story legends like dave sheridan jay lynch and the granddaddy of them all r crum have all lived and worked here like his predecessors derek has draws inspiration from his own backyard there's a guy about 20 or 30 feet away from me on the corner and i'm just flipping through his racks and i see this stuff i see like first i see like a lindsay [ __ ] poster and i'm looking at it it's this really wacky thing with this guy with all these eyes and it's kind of psychedelic but it's not at all psychedelic and it's really weird shaped and i look at it and it's an addition to 25 and i go back farther in the rack and here's one of derek's things and i said to the guy hey who did this and he says what's derek yes i said what else you got you got any more so i was hooked they're colors in a lot of ways i normally wouldn't respond to you know you can almost think of them as pastel they're not pastel but there's a there's a more subtle softer quality to some of the colors that he used it has his own personal flavor to it and more importantly than that i think the thing that was captured by his drawing was the spirit of the time in which the posters were made if he could really wrap his his head around it he liked it he wanted to do it he wanted to be part of that he wanted to extend that out and make it into something bigger than it already was or become part of that fabric that extends out from the music into the poster and the fan because really what a poster becomes after the event is over is a link between the artist the performing artist the artist who did the poster and the person who owns that poster so you had all your late 60s poster artist the famous late 60s poster artist that everybody remembers well then there was no concert posters for years until the early 90s and then all of a sudden you know pop kozik and coop and and derrick and and [ __ ] and these guys there was a whole poster resurgence and derek fell right into that poster resurgence and so it was the perfect time it was the perfect it was the perfect storm for for what he was doing then i developed the flyers developed posters i developed an audience so when it was when i was ready to make the jump back into the fine art world i had people already interested when we did the first show we didn't know what to expect we were getting a lot of coverage we knew that derek was selling the posters around and literally the first his first one-person show was mobbed it was just filled with people and we sold tons of stuff first of all he has an amazing hand at drawing but it's not just the hand it's not just the technical but the sort of the feeling and the emotion he puts into into the expressiveness of his line that becomes really important he's developed a vocabulary again that was there at the very beginning that included angels and devils demons references to industrial landscapes i think that there's a mistake that people sometimes make about artists the demons or the problems that they have have something to do with the with becoming an artist or being an artist there aren't many things that somebody who's really smart can do who has those issues and problems but you can be an artist you it's a job where you're expressing yourself of who you are and you can you can work with that just about my entire professional career is whether it's a gallery manager gallery owner even with what i'm doing and now i can't imagine cleaning without derrick you know the scene you know the art scene that is is i don't want to say that it was built on derek but it's just there that's the identity you know the the rough and tumble gritty guy who's doing things the right way i mean he gets up every day it works how many artists say that there's a lot of artists that wake up and they they don't want to work they just want to wait until they're inspired i've seen derek pick up a pencil and draw when he wasn't inspired or wasn't feeling like drawn so for an artist to see derek's work derek's doing what they want to do you know i mean there's that always that perception that there's you got to be a struggling artist you know there's this you have to put yourself out there on the canvas and i think so many artists kind of pull back from that because they're afraid derek's not you know he's not afraid to put what he needs on that piece of paper you know what i got something i want to draw i want to draw i got it i know what i need i know what it needs to look like i know what's right you know i know and you just can't get it you're going and then just finally you get about 10 pages in of not getting it and you just kind of you try to let go and start drawing and then it comes out [Applause] and then i when i stifled off from the source then it's like life isn't good you know and uh you know i get by but uh if i'm in tune then things just seem to work a lot better i and i'm not religious by any means but religion is many different ways to worship god which is the source so everybody's trying to tune in you know some ways are better than others you know that's another discussion but uh that uh that's how i feel about that [Music] [Music] [Music] years and years i would just like flip pages sketchbook draw draw draw draw like until something came out and that's a good way to approach it i think that's i learned that through cintron but at the same time you know i want to say something you know if this wasn't beginning to say anything i mean then i'm going to have to dig a little deeper and you know what are my issues of the moment you know if there are any issues if there's no issues then it might end up being decoration which isn't as successful to me as it is art should be [Music] there's something that needs to get out it's got to get out right then or it's got to get down in a sketchbook before i forget what it was tomorrow i want to be able to key in on that again tomorrow i'm sketching kind of of on you know with that on my mind and i don't know then the idea is i don't know where you know obviously i don't know where they come from but uh if if i start working on some sketches and so on and so forth then it becomes promising then the music go on and work on developing it [Music] when i'm not doing it right is when i got something and i know how it should look because i know i'm right but it won't come out how i want it to come out it's because it's not supposed to be that way and once i let go if i'm really struggling on something if i could just let go and start sketching generally it comes out how it's supposed to be [Music] it'll never be all completely pure because there's always filters goes through you close enough is the best [Music] if you're in tune you're tuned in you can feel if it's flowing i don't know if that's too esoteric or what but uh i think there's a collective consciousness i think there's a something that we all tune into and i think that it's bigger than any of us but i think that we can be connected to it you know it's a choice one of my pieces is called i got these three three naked women and i got the body all back like this a male body and he's got a thread spool and it's spinning around you know and the threads being pulled through all their hearts up into his head you know and so it's his tug and it's like pulling and it's it's called i am the common thread of all my bad relationships [Music] [Music] well you know i'm sure i'll be doing angels for a while a lot of people you know i'm not doing it because people want to see it what i'm doing is because it's a another thing that people can uh kind of latch on to it's not a religious image it's a spiritual image and if you want to view it as you know religious thing then you know god bless you but if not if you want to tune into the spiritual aspect of it or the spiritual disconnection that a lot of it has to do with then great you get it [Music] [Music] the music is a huge tie-in um but since i've done the fine art stuff there's another beyond these you know another group and i got all these people who actually have never heard any of the music who are just like the artwork and i think that that goes back to my instructions and if you draw it correctly or if you draw it convincingly then people will see that i mean they're not gonna you know take it apart but they they know what's good to them and what they can relate to you know every time he starts a new direction he always shows it to me and i'm like yeah it's okay you know but i know that once he works on it and kind of kind of really you know fleshes it out there's going to be some amazing stuff coming down the line you know as his partner you got to kind of step back even though you're not crazy about a certain direction he's going to step back let him do his thing and then eventually he hits a groove and the stuff that he creates when he's in that groove is is is unbelievable the first nude women i saw were in dad's 60s and 70s playboys and when you do hair you do it in in groups and so then you can go in there and suggest hair with you know your color of hair the black and the white which i'm going to put the white and black in here in a second you know a real artist because real artists they have to create they don't have a choice but to create derek has no choice but to create you know it's he doesn't look at working as like a job you look at jimi hendrix there was something in him that made him do what he did it wasn't like he went to school and became this great you know this great guitarist there's something in him that makes him there's something in derek that makes him do what he does ah this is a heavy heart and uh i did this the day after my dog died my dog jose who i had for 13 and a half years the heaviness of the heavy heart i wanted the hand to be holding the head as a way where the the head is pretty weighted you know i mean it's like you're holding that head up and i made the hand slightly bigger to exaggerate the feel of palming your head into the hand you know people who know them will tell you i mean it's they really oh my dog's the greatest i was like wait there is something about this dog and uh anyhow i called the peace heavy heart and what i did is i took the figure and made it in the shape of a heart right and it heads down your heavy head and then on top is the small coffin because my dog was a small boy and it's waiting i mean it's just pretty kind of self-explanatory but you know i think the heavy the heavy heart and the figures of heart the heavy weight the dealing with the grief of loss and this is that's how i got to make this piece the death of jose but a lot of other people have related to this piece because of uh death in their family or someone that's close to them and they can relate to the image and uh that's uh you know what i thought it was successful period because it was important for me to do this for you know because the way i was feeling after his death but it it became more successful i mean i realized it was more successful because it was a universal feeling i had x amount of people following me up through the concert posters and then we were then we made the jump to fine arts and marty's like whoa we can't just let these people go you know they're your fans who they've helped you out so on and so forth i'm like well absolutely but i'm done doing concert posters and he's like well why don't we draw on t-shirts i'm like you mean why don't i draw on t-shirts and he's like that's what i said why don't you draw on t-shirts so that's what we did now remember we threw an event down in south by southwest all these bands played taking back sunday on earth shadow's fault was it was ridiculous we called it stress fest it was in the middle of the afternoon and we made like three t-shirts and they all then all the t-shirts we put stress on them and they sold like crazy and we were like oh wait you might be onto something [Applause] i can't tell you what he's going to be doing if you were like what's derek going to be creating in a year from now two years from now five years from now i have no idea what that's going to look like because he's dynamic enough and has proven that in his creative process to keep you guessing to to make you wonder what uh what is next so that's definition of an artist you know someone that can move with the times and mirror what they're going through and what we're all going through as a collective so i think he's a champion for this place at the end of the day he's given a lot of people that sense of you know empowerment that you don't have to wait for somebody to do it for you can do it for yourself and if you you know if you work hard enough and surround yourself with the right people yeah you can accomplish things on a national level from from cleveland you know welcome back to that break the entitled is here at derrick has his studio in cleveland ohio as we said he's done a lot of artwork that you have seen for many of your favorite bands and some of them are on on this wall here can you take us through some of the pieces that you have up there um well sure uh converge of course has always been one of my favorites right um hes fest which has turned into stress fast uh due to the clothing line which you know that's my pitch oh we're going to discuss that okay good um and this is your festival here in cleveland this one was and we've we've now have uh stress fest touring or do one or two a year you know we would bring together my favorite bands or the most that i can working with derek i think what what happens is is that i see how big i see what he does or where he's at as a particular point in his career and then i see different avenues that we can go down you know like with let's do a clothing line or let's do a festival or let's do an art show here let's do this or let's do that or let's now it's time to do a book so i think at that time he was so engrossed in the music and he was so accepted by that scene that i felt like you know what let's throw spaghetti at the wall and see if it sticks and let's let's throw out you know a stress fest which originally was a hes fest but people were like come on you're not ozzy osbourne so we were like all right well let's call it stress fest so we went ahead and we called this tressfest and we had no idea what we were doing i mean we had no idea it would be big i would say this would be this was the very first thing derek derek did that i think was really associated with that kind of uh that whole post-hardcore scene and then and i would say this is what kind of broke him and then he followed up with this so and we i think if you look at stress and you break stress down you could probably break it down to these two album covers how many of you have downloaded our record [Music] well i mean integrity was is a was a word that you know i really didn't know about it until i met derek and marty you know they would talk to me about sponsorship or other bands or the way things are supposed to look and integrity was was a big deal to them which eventually i learned a lot from those guys and i was just trying to create something and you know the idea was hey let's let's put together a bunch of derrick hess bands and put him on one show and call it hes fest and it was a five band show five six man show we kind of planted that seed all the bands were into it marty and derek were into it the fans were and we're like wow you know with this seed we can really grow it [Music] it's not for all our friends here for cleveland it's an old song the brand's stress kind of developed in between hes fest and the first stress fest and marty and derek were doing a clothing line and i took it outdoors sonatica stage and not a sage is a great venue i mean it's just i think it's a perfect environment or venue for that type of event with the with the steel bridges in the background right on the rivers got this kind of tough cleveland look outdoors you know people are excited to go outside and i it was real revolutionary i mean i was like man we are so we're doing something so unique and something that's never been done and you know maybe the lineup was too cool for school at the time derek and i would and marty would just fight over bands all the time derek wanted to add sushi to the menu and i wanted to put cheeseburgers [Music] it was a lifestyle that's you know i mean derek was as incorporated in the lifestyle as moshing as the heavy music as the art i mean it was all part of that you know it was all part of it and so when you're when you're in it you don't know that it's a big thing because you're just going day to day working you know trying to make it [Music] happen let's go you look at derek's art and derek's art is all about broken hearts and relationships and angst and if you look at that that movement of music back then that's what that was all about it was all about broken hearts and it was all about pain and suffering you know so what they were saying fit perfectly with what he was drawing the the thinking that anything that derek did is about you know nostalgic i really hate that word i i don't like the concept of using that um thinking about it as nostalgia as much as i would like to think that you take those lessons and you take those actions that derek did and apply them right now yeah go put your money go put your money go put your art go put yourself on the line and whatever creative thing you want to do and go fall flat on your face you know or or be respected because you took the chance as far as the artwork goes the artwork speaks for itself i think that's the important thing the important thing is that derek has always been about doing the work and having resonance whether it's a piece of artwork or that really cool show that may that somebody said you know cleveland's got a really good rock scene now because of this you should definitely book the band there that is all because somebody had some vision and somebody you know had the wherewithal to make it happen and that's [Music] darecast uh growing up in cleveland you kind of always knew who derek s was like he was like i played in a band and kids knew me from that we knew derek in the same way that like kids looked at bands like derek was a rock star to us uh and i remember meeting him and being like super excited you know i'm like holy [ __ ] this is this is derek hess and he's at our show and and he's telling us he likes the band and he wanted to help us out and stuff like that and that was like mind-blowing for us like the the idea of being able to meet the dude behind the art was so cool to me you know one of the hardest things about being in a band is getting people to give a [ __ ] about you but they would come up to our merch stand and they would see that we had a shirt with derrick has his artwork on or that our album had derek hess's artwork on it and all of a sudden they're like holy [ __ ] we need to check this band up at that point in time if you look at anything derek put his artwork on it was like his thumbs up like this band rocks and they did so that was like his stamp of approval on us which meant the world to all of us you know all these really cool bands derek was able to take his success with with everything they were doing and kind of lift up these bands that he believed in and thought were awesome it was the last big festival we did was a stress fest at seeing pavilion i mean as you can see it has thursday finch converge i mean as i lay dying i mean you go down ring worm i mean it was it was huge and a lot of these bands that went on to be become you know really big and so the uh and so you're feeling really good about things and you're like this is this is where it's at i mean there's thousands of kids here and you know life is good and they all look up to derek i mean really we had we had the world at our fingertips and then you know out of nowhere and i don't know what happened but things things just went bad and you know looking back on it that's when derek started drinking yeah it wasn't i wasn't working the program you know but i was well aware of how the aaa structure was and i was aware of the and i'm aware of the disease of alcoholism and how it works and uh and sometimes i you know in the past i've really worked at it and other times i hadn't you know i had to go to rehab when i was 18. and uh the law said go to the county or go to the rehab and i'm like let's go to the rehab and uh that's when i got my education and i realized what was wrong and took the fun out of taking that drink because i knew what was wrong with me you know i would not be able to stop on that one [Applause] if i didn't know any better you look like hell and were drunk or something to drink prior to the atf show i'm not going to go on about that i'll berate that because there's no proof and i'm going to support you until i know differently it would answer a handful of questions though when you were drinking you didn't produce it all kind of like now for whatever reason it may be drinking bipolar you have to get on top of these issues you're chipping away at the business in your life i wouldn't ask you to do any original art for any job right now it hasn't been an option for a while we are running out of money fast there is no new art to create new posters new clothing new ideas etc we can't keep going the way we are and this brings me to my next point you need to call monique and see what it's going to take to get you into that facility you build a great reputation for yourself and a great business but it's wasted away while i try and keep things patched together it seems like you've given up and you don't have the option to give up you've been blessed with a great gift that many people would kill for and a handful of people who care about you but you've also been cursed with some [ __ ] up [ __ ] thankfully with a little hard work you can get on top of that and start to appreciate the good things the the real drastic stuff was we got to a point where i was like i'm not doing this anymore and i quit and you know we were completely out of money and he had nothing and we didn't talk for like two weeks and this was after he'd already been to rehabilitation probably three times and um he called me after two weeks and said hey i'm i'm back in a facility and you know we started the steady climb back from that oh you want another one why why would you even ask all right that's a silly question he hasn't changed it's hard to see a friend who is so talented and such a nice guy and grounded you know fall prey to the evils of call you know it's it was tough it was it was sad i felt so bad for him i was like jesus christ you guys monkey in your back anyone will tell you a good writer has to suffer and live the life a good artist has to feel pain otherwise how are you going to try are you going to translate that onto a canvas or in a book or onto paper you can't i mean look at look at writers in the past they've all had tortured drunken alcoholic drug abuse life poe hemingway uh and scott fitzgerald all of them same with artists [Music] hemingway and van gogh were rumored to have been bipolar as well as a number of other brilliant iconic artist [Music] it's important to pull the curtain back and show people that being a troubled artist is not amazing it's not glamorous it's not [ __ ] fun [Music] van gogh made great work but he's [ __ ] suffered big time when you have a disease of the mind you can't help but see the world differently than the majority of people in the world therefore being an artist you create things that other people have never even thought about that's sort of the beauty behind it the question is can you create without being an alcoholic or can you create without being manic or depressed [Music] if you've ever been obsessed with a girl and then you had the opportunity to date her and then she broke up with you that feeling of longing for her that you have that's what it feels like when you take drugs or alcohol away from an alcoholic [Music] as it progressed as far as the drinking goes the artwork became a little less impactful the best way to draw is when you feel like you're a conduit when it's it's flowing through you and you are disconnected from the source when you're polluted with booze or or alcohol [Music] in your life you have so many people around you that are that drink and so many people around you that have problems and and everything else and i and i think that and a lot of those people there their drinking does not does not hurt their lives in any way but i think the biggest problem for me was watching him deteriorate as time went on and watching the artwork get bad and watching you you took somebody that never missed a deadline and never missed uh you know any responsibility who all of a sudden couldn't hit a deadline to save his life no matter how hard he tried how are you i don't even know if you really tried i think the the you know the thought of like what would you do if you actually really truly succeeded you know and and had everything you wanted would would i wonder if there's something in him that feels like that struggle wouldn't be there anymore and if that struggle's not there is the is will the artwork still be as good you know he's in switzerland we got dropped off on the plane by a girlfriend and it was not a good scene she's like okay bye and so off i'm over intercontinental flight over to switzerland to do all these you know all this time to think about it standing there he wants to do with you right now right here he's like comforting me it was standing right here and say that's the curb where my dog is and the curb in switzerland just went in it wasn't like a drop off so i wasn't aware i was off the curb and i'm thinking you know you know poor me and all that and this bus cruises by i mean i had a step back you know and it came really close and i'm holy [ __ ] man i could have stepped out in front of it i could have stepped right out in front of that bus man and it would have looked like an accident you know and just as i thought that i swear to god just as i thought that city streets a pigeon came came between my legs i walked out of the street and another bus came by and hit it right in front of me just as i was thinking that and the bus left and i'm like looking at and i'm like maybe that wasn't such a good idea you know i think i'm gonna go get drunk what over alcohol and drug dependence treatment centers do not normally look for co-occurring illness it's it's very difficult to to determine if they have some other problem but 96 percent of people with drug dependence have another problem so it's very very common that's what probably happened to robin williams he got treated for drugs maybe depression but his bipolar disorder was probably never diagnosed and treated the depressive episodes are very very severe and they end up eventually resulting in hopelessness helplessness and worthlessness and these are the features that typically precede and predict a suicide attack and then what happens is that alcohol or drug use on top of it converts somebody who's thinking about suicide into somebody who impulsively attempts suicide but i i i think there are components of mental illness that are appealing to people who are artists during highs and lows for example people have intense emotion you know these tense feelings of affect engender creativity so if you will with bipolar disorder there's kind of a sweet spot where you have lots of highs very little depressions and very little psychosis these are the people like isaac newton bipolar type one winston churchill bipolar type two there are a lot of people in our civilization who have bipolar who have been extraordinarily productive what we have here is a derek's obama poster the um it was uh back then the obama campaign was reaching out to many different artists to uh to do a poster for for for the for the campaign and um everybody's familiar with shepard fairey's you know uh iconic obama poster well one of they asked derek to do it also but little did they know derek was none in no position to create posters when this was actually happening and in fact i remember he was like this is just too much stress i can't i can't i can't deal with it he just couldn't he just couldn't even wrap his head around it so i was like well let me find an image that i think might work for an obama poster and if you okay it uh we'll send it off to a graphic designer and we'll we'll see what we can make happen and he was like he was like sure and so uh i went ahead and you know and found this image and and we went we went forward with it and found designer to to put this together for us and that was that so number one he was drinking and he couldn't he couldn't couldn't create anything number two he was drinking and everything was an insurmountable insurmountable obstacle it was it was huge so it's like you know i'd be like hey you know what you need to pay a bill today or whatever and it was just more than he could handle and so of course then you get a call from the obama campaign and they said hey we want derek hess to create a poster i mean come on you might as well you know be asking him to kind of climb on everest it wasn't going to happen you know and he he was also so invested in the campaign and and with with the book please god save us and and everything he he really despised everything that was going on during those times it and and he and he and he loved obama and uh i think um the thought of having to create a poster was um more than he could he could deal with what oh he wants something here you go there you go one of these you know up and down quick things you know when i got i was really bad again and uh i had to go to my psych and i'm like i'm real i want to get into a rehab because i need to detox and get better i'm well aware of it and i get there and it's noon and they're like well have you been drinking i'm like hell yeah i've been drinking and i'm gonna be sick i'll be sick if i don't drink you know booze is the only drug that will kill you if you um withdraw heroin will make you want to die same with oxycontin but it won't kill you only booze is the only thing that will kill you on a withdrawal she goes worry suicide i'm like hell yeah i'm suicide all right i'm just he just rattled out of my mouth i don't know i guess i was i wasn't really planning anything you know and then she had me pink slipped you know security took me to the metal metal board and uh and the people in there is i felt like alice cooper you know i was totally from the inside and then and then they wanted to give me ect and then i was a totally ramones you know give me give me shock treatment you know it was pretty cool so you did draw in there though oh yeah we had like you know art therapy you know so i went in there and kicked ass you know oh yeah nut jobs i'll show you how to draw you know i'm a fixer so if something's wrong i want to fix it whether it's whether he's depressed or manic or whatever he is you know i have to let him ride it out on his own and not intervene and not be like hey you know what we should do this or we should do that or you know maybe this will make you feel better because you know what nothing you do is going to kind of change that [Music] you can sell passion you can't you can't sell can't sell art and so once he get once he stopped caring there was no more passion and in regardless the fans could see that i would talk to him and i'd be like hey you know what you have a responsibility to your to your freaking fans you know it's like you have to you you got to get it together i don't know what makes him get it together or what makes him keep it together when you have those kind of demons you know but somehow some way i think that you know i think he realizes he has a responsibility to himself and a responsibility to the people that that love him you know i think your demons are going to follow you no matter what you do you know i think that him being an artist though and being in the public i think and i don't know this and i can't speak for him but i think it might make him feel more responsible to to staying sober because he has to be responsible to people that look up to him and fans and everything else so i so you know if he was just out mowing yards you know he might not feel that same pressure the same responsibility to people you know and and who knows the way i look at it is is i read the emails and i see the people that his art affects and how it affects them and you know for good and bad and you know and it's like and the way his art has changed some of these people's lives and and how it's inspired them to do things and be better and and you know whether or not they're creating or just you know recovering from an illness or or dealing with uh somebody's death you know his art helps make people's lives better and if i am responsible for you know bridging the gap between derek and those people then you know i could die tomorrow and be pretty comfortable with what i've done um i uh you know i got back to cleveland i did 16 years so you know sober i took care of so much stuff i wasn't dealing healthy with my emotions and you know as you can see um i got dropped off on a plane with a girl breaking up with me the girl the hemorrhage girl and i got over to zurich and i fell off the wagon after 16 years um suicidal and all that good stuff but i've got a number of years under the belt now and i'm feeling good i'm taking care of myself but back into that i can definitely see the source was clouded it was you know so there wasn't a clear line the work i was drawing when i was drunk or you know hung over or whatever wasn't as good as it could be let me let me put it there i would be a loser if i tried to do artwork when i'm drunk especially when i see it the next day because i thought i was doing a masterpiece you know right here's the hemorrhage piece i was telling you about the other day with the clutching of the you know the chest trying to you put pressure on the wound you know whenever you're hemorrhaging and uh not being able to do it add unresolved type issues as far as coping you know i'm not handling this very well or whatever you know everybody deals with things differently i dealt with it you know with the artwork and uh no i still got no answer there was no closure i didn't understand you know it was i was but it wasn't me you know it took me a while to figure that it was me it was her issues you know and that's okay we just weren't on the same page it's just the way she did it was kind of shitty but i got a hemorrhage out of it you've got he's got the drawings he's got the artistic skill and as i'm sure there's lots of people out there that can draw you know but the guy just brings so many layers of the human condition and etc to the to the drawing and it's you can't go wrong it's beautiful stuff so the very first piece i saw by derek was this one i was actually at the concert back in cleveland because i'm from england and this was bauhaus huge band in england uh but i just saw it hanging up and i had no idea that this was by a local artist i had no idea it's the drawing the quality of the drawing is just stunning um you know there's line work he does where it's like leonardo da vinci you know it's just quality line work then you realize rembrandt lives down the street one day i was down at the studio and this was hanging up in the window and taped to the window you can see the marks on it it's just taped up and i just walked in and it's like whoa you know i've i've pretty much found you know i've found the varna right there you know this is the one this is his famous piece and then there's a yeah obviously it's different rendition but it's it's original it's hand-drawn beautiful captures it it's just ridiculous you can't get your head around it really that's the one that kind of hit me the most where the angels kind of flying and just kind of leaving me behind and i'm kind of drowning in and everything that's going on i felt like my guardian angel left me at that time lupus is an autoimmune disease to where your body starts attacking itself and that's what ended up happening it started attacking my my liver first and then eventually the kidneys took a hit and then a heart so it just kind of stacked up so before all that happened you know i just always admired derek's artwork i said all right this is cool this is nice and but when something [Music] life-changing happens that's when you start looking at the artwork a lot more deeply you have more time to look at these things and so i started kind of relating and kind of put myself into these pictures so to speak this is me right now this is me at my darkest moment well it's kind of flipped in a weird way because it's the right side of my brain it looks like it's left but the mass was on the right side there's a three-fourths of an inch mass about the size of a blackberry that is like in this part of your brain just to kind of work through it i started really turning to art i kept drawing and painting and then i got to the point where my hands would shake so bad that i couldn't hold a paintbrush when i couldn't hold a pencil then it got to the point where like just holding my hands in any position would hurt too bad so i just would look at art and i would watch like youtube artists and like their progress and i would like follow him on like instagram and tumblr and facebook and i would like look at his art and have two of his books so i'd like to look through that and it's one of the few artists that i feel like can actually visually reproduce what depression and anxiety feels like because it's not something that a lot of people seem to understand i don't know it just makes me feel like someone understands out there it was really nice to be able to see someone put out art that reflected just the inner workings of them because that's such a personal thing and to put it out there like that i think it helped make me realize that i can do this [Music] i've been dealing with depression since i was 17. a few years ago it really got really bad i couldn't handle it anymore and i went to a doctor and when i walked into his psychiatrist's office there was a derek hess painting on the wall and the first thing i said was oh nice to meet you where'd you get that derrick hess painting from and he goes oh you know him and i said well not personally but i know his work i i pay attention to it and it goes oh he's a patient of mine he was here for all the same things that you're here for that's why all the nitty-gritty dark stuff because i understand it he he takes my emotions and he puts them on paper and and they're his but i agree with them thank you because it's it's a struggle every every day to deal with some of the things that i had to deal with to have somebody out there alive from cleveland that can inspire me that it means the world to me to get up every day and to know that somebody can change my view of things just by the pictures that they draw [Music] derek hey how are you i'm good i haven't seen you in a good jillion years it was really cool to see derek and i knew him back when i lived in cleveland and that was like 15 years ago what's up well you know came here to get my work done cool guess who's in that chair over there yeah i walked in and saw derek hess sitting in a chair getting work done and my jaw dropped i couldn't believe it hi how's it going good how are you doing i'm uh i'm great shocked what are you getting um actually i'm wow getting this piece right here awesome this is your stuff yeah i love that piece yeah this is my favorite by far where's she gonna put it on you're shaking yeah you're gonna be so cool so we're gonna throw that on your ribs right ouch can't wait to see it done so you gotta tell me what is it about this particular piece that kind of resonated for you oh i was engaged for three years and uh i'm not single and uh oh no because my job i had to take the night shift in order to move ahead and uh i had to make a choice whether to pursue a career that i've been dreaming about or losing the love of my life sorry my heart's broken i want to be able to oh a tattoo people tattoo in my work it's you know it's humbling it's flattering and it's also like oh my god i feel like pressure you know like god i hope i never sell out because i remember i was getting a tattoo when metallica the record kill them all came out best metallica record i'm looking at these pictures on the wall of other people's tattoos at this tattoo joint and someone got metallica and the logo tattooed right across the back of their neck and i'm like how cool is that and as i sat there getting my work done the more i thought about it was like you know what happens when they sell out you know what's that couldn't do metallica on the back of his neck and sure enough they sold out so that's like a responsibility i have i like i can never sell out because a tattoo people hate i was flipping through channels it was a tattoo show i guess and i just saw the flood damage piece and i heard his name once [Music] [Applause] i was going i went like 10 weeks in a row just doing my whole back a done of like of all his more artwork [Music] this piece the presence you know it's a like an angel that's always around you and um back in uh 1990 my sister had passed away at birth and that's what i have her name and and so that's always been to me like she's always been around me even though she's gone i want to be an example also you know these pieces worth this these angels like you know he's actually reaching up to grab the noose and it's another thing you know this is like pulling yourself out of stuff i remember the flood damage and just him looking up all that rain and weight coming down but i was looking up ready to come out eventually and everything's gonna be all right [Music] what derek draws is the same problems that absolutely everybody in the world deals with loneliness heartbreak lack of hope you know at some point in everybody's life we've all been there i think that's why people gravitate to to what he does it's i think it's weird you know because i mean i see derek every day you know and as far you know he walks his dog and he fishes and you know and then you'll walk up and you'll see some kids like oh my god i can't believe i'm finally meeting you i've waited my whole life to meet you and get some gets a signature on his arm then he goes and gets a tattooed i'm like it always blows my mind but at the same time i'm super proud of it you know i mean it's like when you can make that kind of impact in somebody's life that's a pretty special thing [Music] yes he's been a huge influence on my art visual art um just because i was around him so often and i watched how he worked how driven he was how he took criticism how he would fall into depression was able to pull himself out do another great body of work every i i feel that everyone has that those moments in their life i think derek has it more often than most he's always able to bounce back you know you know i watched it happen over you know so you know 10 years that i was really close with him i learned from that because at the time i was doing music and i have a really hard time doing visual art music at the same time it's one or the other so when the band broke up you know i put all my attention towards visual art and i would think of him often i was like you know this isn't enough work no you got to be possessed like derek is you know like think of that think of that you know so you have to keep moving you have to like every idea you have even if it's stupid do it because it'll probably turn out [Music] you know i mean if you look back at those early concert posters i think he was still trying to kind of find himself so you had this guy this this this artist that was classically trained and he was he was doing this kind of unclassic kind of art but it was it was but it was very fundamentally sound and then once he developed a fan base and once he developed a a world for his art then he was like hey you know what i can really start to explore things and do different things and because i we get that all the time where we'll have we'll have kids especially people that used to follow them way back at the early concert poster days like why don't you do more stuff like that that was so awesome and you're like you can only do that for so long you know and as long as you have the fundamentals in place you can do anything you want and if you look at all the the great artists you know they were all classically trained and then if you look at their art you know what some of it evolved into some just a rage of stuff that you're like you look at you're like i could totally do that myself but in reality you could never do it yourself because you don't have the fundamentals to be able to do it yourself [Music] now this one here is a cheap trick dream police and i found out this was a canadian issue 8-track who knew that being because of the red plastic so i'm going to match this up on one of the wings as well so i'm going to work some of this red into the wings this beige color of the label i think is going to be complemented by the beige of the paper and this is not all exactly black in here this is called the payne's gray so it'll be a a blue tint that i'm going to scrape over on top of the wings like i did on these being a visual artist is a writer is not different from being a symphony musician if you don't work all the time you can't do it [Music] you know the sort of idea is that you better be in new york or l.a or some place where you really can reach an international audience [Music] for a lot of types of art it doesn't make that that much difference what i think does make a difference is that that an artist i think does better when their work is grounded in who they are [Music] i don't think an artist does the same sort of work in cleveland as they do in baton rouge and i don't think they do the same sort of work as in baton rouge as in juneau alaska it it it does affect you and i think that i mean it's not true of all artists but i think that there's there's that possibility that derek needs to be here [Music] the reason i can't give up there's been plenty of times you know that me and derek have had these super highs and then we've had these super lows and and and you know there's been many times and especially the drinking days you know i was like just i just want to just throw in the towel you start to realize that you're on this journey together and you've been in it for so long and you've been doing it for so long there's there's unfinished business and you know what i'm around and i'm sticking through it because of the unfinished business you know and i think if you asked him is there unfinished business and he would probably he would probably say the same thing so [Music] well it's it's best when people connect and they get it you know i mean that's most fulfilling [Music] i want the artwork to draw the viewer in and reminisce over it for a minute five minutes is great 10 minutes 100 years is great get it to lost last that long but that's what i like about my artwork is you know that's what i strive for you know once in a while i'll do something very graphic for whatever reason but rarely you know it likes to have an impending you know like you know that kind of thing you know and the quality of the drawing you know is about pulling it in and i think that's why it resonates uh with a lot of people because it's not instant gratification you know it's gratifying but it takes you a minute to get it or feel it maybe not even have to get it [Music] nice is boring the sad songs are what sell you know and i'm not drawing the cell i'm drawing what i feel

Channel: Perspective

Views: 3,148

Keywords: Arts, The Arts, Theatre, Music, Full EPisode, Full documentary, documentary, performing arts, derek, hess, forced, perspective, film, art, music, design, bio, bipolar, depression, mental, health, painting, drawing, concert, posters, illustration, derek hess, strhess, artist, bipolar disorder, bipolar symptoms, bipolar disorder symptoms

Id: yqcMsBgC9iM

Length: 93min 51sec (5631 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021