“We often describe our work as being like music,” says Jessie Unterhalter, of the art she makes with Katey Truhn. “It’s abstract and it’s fluid. It’s sort of a collaboration of different shapes, like how different sounds collaborate in music. And the fact that we collaborate with each other is pretty cool. We’re a band, basically.” Better known in the art world as simply Jessie and Katey, the Baltimore-based duo have been creating largescale public murals, fine art, and sculptures together since 2011 after meeting as students at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Their work is colorful, dynamic, and features geometric abstractions inspired by the surrounding environment, such as their mural for New York City’s 191st Street tunnel or the four-hundred-foot “Summer Kaleidoscope” floor mural they designed for the Eakins Oval in Philadelphia. Jessie and Katey’s murals have been featured in a number of national mural festivals and showcases, and they’ve created several large-scale framed paintings that have been exhibited in Brooklyn, Miami, Baltimore, and Russia. Chosen by Lollapalooza to design this year’s festival poster, the duo created an abstract design based on a bird’seye view of Chicago’s Grant Park, which incorporates permanent park elements like Buckingham Fountain and the harbors of Lake Michigan along with the movement and flow of the Lollapalooza audience. We spoke with Jessie and Katey about creating the poster, the challenges and joys of making art, and (of course) what kind of music they listen to while painting. FLOOD
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