From October 28, 2024 to September 1, 2025, Susie Frazier worked closely with one of the few living, master artists of our time, Derek Hess, whose art has been collected by The Louvre and The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. The objective, set forth by his management company Strhess LLC, was to activate his longstanding brand both in-person and online in preparation for two milestone exhibitions being planned, while also helping to bring to life his 7th and largest book, which is expected to release in 2025.
CONTENT CREATION:
Serving as an embedded creative director, Susie developed a year's worth of social media content (posts/reels/stories) focusing on Derek's artistic process, his art, and his partners. The content was all shot and edited by Susie as she followed Derek through his weekly, professional life.
Coming up with compelling, short-form reels to engage fans was a strategy Susie deployed to drive revenue and fan engagement. One of her concepts was a series of "COME and GET IT" reels, where Derek stapled a few of his illustrated concert posters on telephone poles around Northeast Ohio, just like he used to do in the 90s when his career first took off, and with visual clues shown in the footage, fans were invited to snag the posters for themselves. Every time we shared the reels, the posters were gone within minutes.
This reel below was the first one we did in late 2024 to promote The Jesus Lizard show taking place at the Cleveland's Agora Theater.
EXHIBITION STAGING:
In order to prepare for Derek's first solo exhibition in six years, which took place on November 15, 2024, Susie used her interior design skills to transform Derek's warehouse gallery into a mood-filled and sophisticated show space for his work.
Leaning on her expertise in retail operations, Susie led the integration of a point of sale checkout system for the Derek Hess Gallery and conducted transactions during the show and throughout the year, ensuring Derek and his team were free to connect with fans, clients and partners.
BOOK PRODUCTION:
With her expertise in custom publishing, Susie was tapped to work with Derek and his book design team to help bring a multi-year self-publishing effort to completion. Derek's 7th and largest book (280+ pages), The Revolutionary Concert Art of Derek Hess, is expected to release in the fall of 2025. In it, fans will find over 300 images of his hand illustrated concert posters and black & white fliers created for many musical and visual arts shows in America and overseas. Over the months of sorting and archiving all the fliers, Susie found several that had been accidentally overlooked, so they were later added. Over many months, she interviewed Derek about specific posters he created, then transcribed and edited those recordings into Derek's written stories that have been included throughout the book.