While many galleries choose to schedule a quiet break around the holidays in order to regroup for the new year, there are still a few safe bets around town for where to find artwork this week. Two new exhibitions will open at the Georgia Museum of Art this Saturday. “Master, Pupil, Follower: 16th to 18th Century Italian Works on Paper” includes roughly 30 drawings and prints selected to represent various artistic styles and Italian regional schools, while “The Monsters Are Due on Broad Street: Patrick Dean” provides a retrospective look at the local cartoonist and longtime Flagpole contributor’s illustration career.

In addition to “WILD,” a show inspired by the new children’s garden at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, the Lyndon House Arts Center recently opened “Interior Worlds by Leah McKellop,” a small body of work exploring personal history within domestic spaces through printmaking and silk dying techniques. 

Perhaps the easiest spot to drop in is the Gallery at Hotel Indigo, where the group exhibition “FUN” attempts to carry the joyful abandon of summer through the winter months. Seven artists working in a variety of mediums contribute pieces that are both vibrant and playful, and thankfully offset our landscape’s bare trees and increasingly chilly weather.

Brittainy Lauback’s photographs epitomize carefree leisure. “Corrie in the Pool,” a portrait of a woman calmly drifting through the water on a swim ring, is relaxing to imagine, while “Boy in the Bumper Car,” a giddy kid revved up and ready to win, shares a sense of urgency and excitement. Neil Hancock’s large painting, “When Pigs Fly,” is fantastical and equally light-hearted. Loose brushstrokes depict a bright pink pig soaring above a red barn while a full sea foam green moon watches down from a starry sky.

Marla Star’s trippy pen-on-paper illustrations tap into a psychedelic dimension where disembodied eyes and clawed hands float among neon geometric shapes and patterns. Ultra precise lines and meticulously dotted details sprawl across stark white backgrounds in a way that feels both jarring and hypnotizing. Star’s pointillism approach is echoed in the playful creations of Jolene O’Brien, who repurposes old vinyl records into canvases covered in mesmerizing dots. Perhaps influenced by traditional Aboriginal art, tiny drops of color assemble into mandala-like patterns and visually vibrate to their own rhythm. 

The mixed media works of Kim Truesdale are incredibly eye-catching and distinct for their absurdity, despite their more somber backstory. Her “Fed Up” series depicts portraits of women whose faces are partially obscured by teeny, tiny pieces of food. Sculpted perfectly to scale, and nailing the appearance of texture without fail, these miniature polymer clay foods immediately bring the viewer in close. Pulling portraits from scrapbooks depicting a local chapter of Future Homemakers of America from 1956–1967, the “Fed Up” series explores ideas of losing a woman’s identity and individuality through domestic labor. Using the miniatures to obscure their sensory organs, Truesdale draws attention to the complex relationship women have traditionally held with both food consumption and preparation.

Katherine Miele takes the comfort indoors to plush, embroidered armchairs and couches. Prismatic splotches of color create a calico effect, and one interior scene of a staircase, “Spiraling,” is particularly alluring for its dizzying chaos of thread. Miele’s attention to silhouettes and color blocking is complemented by Hannah Betzel’s abstract works. Drawing the eye primarily to the edges and intersections of forms, her painted paper collages occasionally lock into focus with a gingko leaf suddenly popping to the forefront.

Open to visitors around the clock, the outdoor GlassCube presents “Supple Moments, Dark Corners,” a new site-specific installation by local artist Eli Saragoussi. Leaning on elements of set design, the tropical environment is constructed from cartoonish characters and plants painted onto masonite. The whimsical world is inhabited by anthropomorphic characters like a hissing rattlesnake, flying purple elephant and blue gorilla wearing a gold chain. Wide-eyed fish and aquatic organisms like kelp and anemone coexist among an earth-bound tree and flowering bush, requesting that visitors suspend their disbelief and accept multiple ecosystems coexisting at once.

The installation is worthy of a return visit during moonlight hours, when dozens of pairs of glowing, fluorescent eyes glare out from every corner of the GlassCube. “Supple Moments, Dark Corners” is also accompanied by a QR code to access “Jungle Drone,” a soundscape created by Max Boyd, Saragoussi’s bandmate in Baby Tony and the Teenies.