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This sweet opportunity comes to us from the Downtown Austin Alliance, the Pease Park Conservancy, and Ride Bikes Austin – so we know it's a damned good thing indeed. Take the self-guided Art & Parks Tour to explore the best of what Downtown Austin art and parks have to offer through this selection of curated murals, artworks, and green spaces. You can sign up anytime, so click that URL and get ready to learn the most vibrantly visual parts of your city soon – live and in person.

Use your smartphone to access self-guided tours of the outdoor public art sited by UT's award-winning Landmarks program any time you feel like it. BONUS: There's also a free, docent-led tour starting at Marc Quinn's "Spiral of the Galaxy" (1501 Red River) on Sun., Jan. 8, 11am.

A fox peers through purple foliage. Coyotes wear bright flowers as camouflage. A bear wanders among California tiger lilies spotted by vibrant green dots. These are a few of the creatures who inhabit Julia Lucey’s painted worlds – all of them wildlife in increasingly unfamiliar spaces. Lucey utilizes traditional aquatint etchings to communicate the man-made strangeness being visited upon our natural world, with the effect mirroring “a visual tableau much like the European tapestries of the 17th Century,” as the event copy states. But these works are more than beautiful: They ask the viewer to contemplate their own place in the paving over of other animals’ habitats. – James Scott

Ceci n’est pas une exposition d’art: 100 years since its inception, and Surrealism is still getting under our skin with its dream illogic and witty non sequiturs. Featured artists include Hans Bellmer, Leonora Carrington, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Wifredo Lam, Man Ray, and Dorothea Tanning.

The best science fiction takes on current fears and hopes and imagines them differently. There’s always some recognizable thread that ties it to our own experience. Aryel René Jackson has mastered that with their art, tackling current social and racial narratives to create a visual future that might just happen. Using videos, and work created for past films, the Ivester presents Jackson’s world – a world ripe with colors and textures, forms that could be humans, situations that could occur in a more evolved society. Slightly spacey, slightly familiar, this exhibit is a feast for the eyes and the soul. It’s impossible to leave without reflecting on where we could be better. – Cat McCarrey

Art and music? Name a more iconic duo. For this exhibit, a dozen local artists created pieces inspired by a song, musician, or style of music associated with the Lone Star State. Influences could range from Selena to Willie to Beyoncé, from Houston rap to Tejano to blues. Come see what inspired participating artists Amitai Plasse, Billy Ray Mangham, Carl Block, Denise Elliott Jones, Greg Barton, Jess Wade, Jamie Lea Wade, Karen Woodward, Liz Potter, B Shawn Cox, Sylvia Troconis, and TVHeadATX. – Kat McNevins

I first saw Dana Younger’s art at the Blue Genie Bazaar, and even those smaller pieces were enough to make me a forever fan. His sculptures were realistic with slight exaggerations to capture interest, bits and pieces of humans and nature etched in wood and bronze. When placed alongside the popping portrait paintings of partner Felice House, their work becomes even more powerful. House plays with feminist rewritings of history, showing glowing cowgirls and vibrant desert settings, settings where Younger’s comedic cowboys and stately cacti comfortably dwell. A West that never was, but is intensely alluring. – Cat McCarrey

One thing I’ve loved about newer theatre or museums is the space given for land acknowledgement – statements about the ancestral roots of the space being used. Space that was not always ours, but taken. The Blanton’s latest exhibit tackles that question, but pushes the boundaries. It’s not just about what Native America was, but what it can be. Curator and lauded artist Wendy Red Star has assembled nine other Native artists to create a rich exploration of what life in America is today. Shown through a variety of mediums, something is guaranteed to resonate with the audience. Whether it’s the photos, paintings, videos, or multimedia works is up to you. – Cat McCarrey

The California-based artist, known for combining visual art and industrial design, uses media including photography, sculpture, simple machines, and more to explore both the art world and corporate culture and other themes during this exhibition’s six-decade span. While tackling often serious subject matter, Cheng’s work retains a sense of playfulness on display at the Jones Center. Get a first look of the collection at the public opening reception Friday at 6pm. – James Renovitch

Ever topical, Ivester Contemporary’s September Project Space show centers around memory and home – concepts apt for the seasonal change to cooler weather. This exhibit, “Echoes of Home: Relational Memories and Urban Futures” by Occupy Vacancy, a public art initiative based in St. Louis, is its first ever within a gallery context. Usually the artists, Brianna McIntyre and André Fuqua, transform vacant lots into neighborhood-specific installations “that contemplate St. Louis’s vernacular architecture, settlement history, and blight within the city’s Northside,” reads the exhibition text. “Echoes of Home” similarly uses architectural elements and aspects of the urban landscape, but within a gallery context, inviting Austinites to reflect on our own complicated and rapidly changing urban landscape. – Lina Fisher

The first Saturday of every month from 1-4pm, the 72 artists housed at the Canopy complex on Springdale Road open their studios to the public, allowing an intimate look into Austin’s visual art scene. Ivester Contemporary and ICOSA Gallery are also open, giving people a chance to see work in progress and fully realized gallery shows, as well as buy or commission new artwork. Sa-Ten, which recently expanded its hours from 7am-9pm every day, provides tasty Japanese libations worth their own trip, so grab a yuzu lemonade to sip and wander. – Lina Fisher

This local treasure of a venue, run by those Contemporary Austin folks who also bring us the Jones Center shows Downtown, is all about the outdoors – which is perfect for these trickily navigated times of ours, n'est-ce pas? Recommended: Stop by and breathe in the air, enjoy the lawns and gardens and the many examples of world-class sculpture arrayed across the property, and (as Frankie used to say) r-e-l-a-x.

Here's a two-person exhibition that features painting, installation, videography, and sculpture by Moll Brau and Wes Thompson. It's a deep dive into a pool of loneliness, triumph, and rebirth. It's a forest of mazes where fireflies provide the light. It's a show of creations from a pair of terrific, hardworking local artists and you don't want to miss it.

New works by Kelly Breez, Simone Thornton, and Sarah Murphy.

Enter the fascinating world of illusions in this new venue that boasts a stunning array of intriguing visual, sensory, and educational experiences among new, unexplored optical wonderments.

This multimedia exhibition is a comprehensive exploration of the beauty of botanical forms, expressed realistically and in the abstract, featuring the work of local artist Francine Funke.

You imagine a line and it’s probably straight the way a manufactured ruler is. Yet nature shows lines curved in all manner of ways. Born in 1980 within a 120-year-old house, the Wally Workman Gallery presents two artists whose work engages the myriad manner of lines. In his sculptural work, Joseph Janson utilizes bailing wire to make pieces that “ebb and flow like marks on a page to create recognizable forms: people, animals, and objects such as tables and lamps,” according to the gallery’s description. Stephanie Strange’s graphite drawings are more concerned with making seeable the invisible: communication. “In her work,” the gallery says, “she seeks to express the beauty of how energy is a communication running through all existence.” Both artists use curving lines, but attend this show’s opening reception on Saturday, Aug. 3, to see how they do so in their own materials. – James Scott

This exhibition of new work by Kate Breakey showcases hand-colored photography of the natural world, particularly of Texan and Australian landscapes, animals, and insects.

This place, ah, it's one of our favorite places in the entire city; and of course they're properly corona-closed. But check 'em out online right now – it's a rich, wonder-filled website – to whet your appetite for when things get back to … uh … are we still calling it "normal," these days?

Time to upgrade from your Ansel Adams wall calendar and instead appreciate the legendary landscape photographer’s black & white pictures of the American West where they belong – on a gallery wall.

Audiovisual artist Masch brings his site-specific light installation controlled by a drum set and a little help from some fancy programming. Friday and Saturday evenings each feature a different trio of renowned drummers to showcase what the lights can do in the hands of a professional percussionist. Sunday is open to anyone with tickets from the previous days’ showcases and, from 1-8pm, Masch invites local drummers to grab some sticks and see what kind of light show they can produce. – James Renovitch

This is Ray Donley's gallery of art by Native Americans, located in that company of artistic glory called Canopy and resplendent with creations from the original people of our struggling country.

Yard Dog presents the vibrant works of Paul Rodriguez, a printmaker from San Miguel de Allende. "And some very cool new paintings by Harry Underwood."

Owner, director, and master printer of Flatbed Press, Katherine Brimberry wears many hats. On top of all these hats is her artist hat, which you’ll be hard “pressed” to ignore once you’ve enjoyed her newest exhibit of prints and mixed media works. “Chronicles: A Retrospective” shows off Brimberry’s cornerstone status in Texas printmaking, with gorgeous landscapes and intriguing visuals abounding. From her own artist statement: “When I place found objects into visual relationships with landscape details,: I intend to create an enigma. The viewer, who without the benefit of the history of the objects, is presented this mystery and can find and assign meaning. My underlying intention is creating images that spark epiphany about time and space, life and death, past and future.” Check out the show’s opening on Sat., Aug. 24, and see a retrospective of Brimberry’s collaborative pieces over at St. Edward’s Fine Arts Gallery on Aug. 30. – James Scott

Utilizing collected materials – recycled clay, lumber, thrift store blankies – queer Texan Anthony Sonnenberg’s new show uses not only installed art pieces but performance. Makes sense, given that the queerness Sonnenberg explores here holds space in both stillness and movement. Consider his acknowledged muses, Divine and André Leon Talley, both of whom were striking in still images and awe-inspiring in motion. The event copy extrapolates: “These, and other creatives like them, stood out for their ability to defy traditional beauty standards, becoming fashion icons for their completely unique, uncompromising style, and their outsized impacts on the worlds of fashion, film, music, and pop culture.” Enjoy the opening reception festivities on Aug. 23, or check in any Saturday through Oct. 5. – James Scott

Art is communal, stronger when visions are shared. ICOSA already showcases the connections between Austin artists on the regular, but with “Straight Like That” the web grows to include the Houston-based Throughline Collective. With a selection curated by Mueni Loko Rudd, a Kenyan American curator and preservationist dedicated to expanding the cultural landscape of art, visitors to ICOSA’s latest show can witness a vibrant exhibit of Texas-based artists pushing the boundaries of what is expected from art. The pieces vary in form and theme. But all evoke new insights into what Texas art can be. – Cat McCarrey

Audiovisual artist Masch brings his site-specific light installation controlled by a drum set and a little help from some fancy programming. Friday and Saturday evenings each feature a different trio of renowned drummers to showcase what the lights can do in the hands of a professional percussionist. Sunday is open to anyone with tickets from the previous days’ showcases and, from 1-8pm, Masch invites local drummers to grab some sticks and see what kind of light show they can produce. – James Renovitch

The local powerhouse of figurative painting, the art school that's the smart school for artists of all kinds, they've got a painting-along-at-home series going to help you keep your skills honed in these socially restrictive times, featuring live costumed models posing on camera and a thriving community of creatives rendering that lovely human biotecture from their separate studios. "Join us for a three-hour costumed-model drawing session. Use any supplies you wish, listen to music, share your work, chat with others. It’s a great way to stay connected with your art community!"