Have you walked, pedaled or driven around Eugene just to see the art pieces emblazoned on the walls? The city of Eugene invites you to be a tourist in your own town with its Downtown Mural Bike Tour Thursday, July 17, led by Debbie Williamson. Williamson, the University of Oregon Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art communications manager, has always been a lover of the arts, and the JSMA is the art museum she’d visit as a child. “I grew up in Eugene, and I have very strong core memories of how my shoes click-clacked on the stairs when I walked up,” she says. “I felt like a princess.” The art pieces and murals around the city, particularly those from the 20×21 EUG Mural Project — a city of Eugene Cultural Services Public Art Program initiative to create 20 public murals around Eugene by 2021, of which Williamson was a committee member — are also near and dear to her heart. “Public art is like a museum you don’t have to pay admission for,” she says. “It’s essential to a community to have vibrant public art, to walk into a parking garage and encounter a poem, to walk down a city sidewalk and see a sculpture or a little tile piece.” Williamson has only led walking tours of the local murals in the past, but biking will allow cyclists to go see murals in harder-to-reach places, she says. The Alexis Diaz mural on the side of Wildtime Foods (1061 West 2nd Avenue) is one of her favorites. “It’s a large mural of mammoths, and it was all painted with a little jar of Sumi ink and a brush that’s the size of two of your fingers together,” Williamson says. “He painted it with just little brush strokes. It’s a master class in mark making, and I don’t get to talk about it very often.” Jenette Kime, Eugene’s transportation options coordinator, will do the biking on Williamson’s behalf, almost like a bicycle rickshaw situation. Kime has always loved biking, she says, but grew up seeing it as a form of recreation rather than transportation. “It’s fun to do these kinds of events that are really easy for people to have an early entry into that kind of topic,” Kime says. While Kime pedals, Williamson will regale the cyclists with stories of the different murals and local art pieces.

The Downtown Mural Bike Tour is 10 am Thursday, July 17, and begins at Campbell Community Center, 155 High Street. Tickets are $5 for Eugene residents, $6 for non-residents. Bring your own bicycle or ride a PeaceHealth Rides bike.