Explore These 9 New Public Art Installations Along Austin’s Hike-and-Bike Trail
The Trail Conservancy's public art program brings murals, sculptures and immersive works by local artists to the trail
For many Austinites, the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail is part of daily life — a place for runs, walks and bike rides. Now, it’s also the site of nine new temporary public art installations, as the 2026 TEMPO on the Trail program transforms stretches of the Butler Trail into an outdoor exhibition.
Presented by The Trail Conservancy in partnership with the City of Austin’s Art in Public Places program, TEMPO on the Trail places site-specific works by local and regional artists at several points along the 10-mile path. Selected from a pool of 113 applicants, the artists created installations ranging from murals and sculpture to interactive works shaped by the landscape, ecology and rhythms of the trail itself. The temporary works will remain on view for 12 months.
“TEMPO on the Trail is about discovery for our artists and for our community,” said Julie Fisher, CEO of The Trail Conservancy. “The Trail is already a place people come to move, reflect, and connect. With TEMPO on the Trail, it becomes a place of creative surprise, storytelling, and imagination.”
Chasing the light
Several of the installations respond directly to the changing light and atmosphere along the trail. That is especially true of enFOLD Collective’s “Sunclipse,” created by Megan Echols and Dana McKinney White, which hangs within the helixing ramp at Pfluger Circle. Echols said she hoped the piece would frame sunset “as both a natural phenomenon and a collective, everyday celebration,” while heightening visitors’ awareness “of the sky above them, the water beneath the bridge, the buildings in the distance, and their own movement through space.”
At Odom Pavilion, Jamal Hussain’s “New Light” uses reflective, iridescent materials to draw attention to the sky. Inspired by “how the Texas sun interacts with the environment around us,” Hussain created a work that shifts with the changing light, transforming the pavilion throughout the day.
At International Shores, Steef Crombach and Priscilla Lustig’s “Cazimi” functions as both sculpture and shelter, with quilted shade planes aligned to the cardinal directions and designed to shift with the light throughout the day. The artists said the work emerged from both cosmic inspiration and practical community feedback. “The two things that came up again and again were very simple: people wanted shade and a place to gather,” they said.
Community and connection
Several artists drew directly from the flora and fauna that define the trail. Victoria Marquez’s mural “Reverie UnderArch,” installed beneath Lamar Bridge, incorporates bats, anole lizards, dragonflies and river animals into a bright, surreal environment meant to restore a sense of immersion where traffic overhead can interrupt it. “For this mural I wanted to ensure people walking on the trail stay engaged in the nature around them,” Marquez said, adding that she hoped it would encourage people “to take a closer look at the animals that inhabit the area.”
Seth Prestwood’s mural “Passages,” at Drake Bridge, similarly channels the many ways Austinites move through the trail, from jogging and biking to canoeing and reading. Drawing from years of personal experience on the path, Prestwood said he wanted viewers to recognize themselves in the work. “I hope people can find themselves represented in the piece in some way,” he said.
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Meditations on ancestry and ecology
Thomas Lemanski’s “Cenotaphs,” at Holly Point, uses carbonized tree limbs and plant matter gathered from along the trail and Lower Colorado River watershed, preserving their impressions in concrete. Lemanski said he hoped people would find the piece “contemplative but not particularly sombre,” and feel “some kind of wonder in the texture and shape of the trees here in Central Texas.”
J.C. King’s “Ghost Harps,” at Holly Overlook, features six wind-activated string instruments accompanied by silhouettes of Great Blue Heron, referencing the site’s ecological and human ancestry. King said the idea had been with him for years: “I’ve had a vision of Aeolian Harp installations in public space as land acknowledgments… I feel that they spoke to something elemental in nature, foundational, universal.” He said he hopes the piece leaves visitors with a sense of “peace, balance, presence, ancestral communion, compulsion toward stewardship, accountability, truth.”
Nature, sound and memory
At Auditorium Shores, Vy Ngo’s “All Boats Bloom” uses boat forms, bamboo and native plantings to reflect on migration, refuge and community. “As a Vietnamese American whose parents were refugees, boats are a strong symbol of transition, protection and hope,” Ngo said. Over the coming year, the installation will serve as a site for gardening, performances and gatherings that further explore those ideas.
For Jasna Boudard, whose “Wing Trace” in the Seaholm area marks her first public art project, the focus was movement itself. Inspired by runners, bikers and wildlife, she said she wanted “to create a piece that connected them all, by immersing human passerby in the silhouettes of a native Central Texas bird in flight.”
Spring open house
The Trail Conservancy will host a community celebration on April 11 from 9–11 a.m. at Seaholm Waterfront, where visitors can meet the artists and explore the installations by foot or bike.
On a trail known for exercise, routine and daily movement, the installations offer another reason to slow down. Some shimmer and change with the light; Some hum with the wind; Some provide shade, others invite contemplation. Together, the works ask trail users to see a familiar route differently, not just as a place to pass through, but as one to pause in.