We are pleased to announce the second recipients of the annual Glasstire Texas Art Writing Awards. This year, the awardees are Colette Copeland and Bill Davenport.
Glasstire founded the Texas Art Writing Awards in 2024 to recognize exceptional art writing in and about the state. As Glasstire’s Publisher, Brandon Zech, noted when the publication established the award, “While organizations across Texas acknowledge the artists, philanthropists, curators, and collectors who are essential to our state’s art scene, no one is highlighting the writers and the writing that are the lifeblood of our art community. As Texas’ art journal of record, we want to step up, thank, and spotlight the writers who are making an impact here.”
This year, Glasstire has given one award for Texas art writing that appeared in Glasstire in 2025, and one award for a lifetime of exceptional writing and impact on the publication and the state’s art scene at large.
Colette Copeland and Brandon Zech. Photo: Jenny Antill
Granbury-based writer, artist, and educator Colette Copeland is the recipient of the 2025 Texas Art Writing Award for Writing on Glasstire. Ms. Copeland has contributed to Glasstire since 2011, and is known for her coverage of alternative art spaces, performance, and significant women artists working in Texas. Ms. Copeland contributed nine articles to Glasstire in 2025, including reviews of shows and events in San Antonio, Fort Worth, and Dallas, interviews with Texas artists, and pieces about her experiences as an artist. You can read her writing here.
Ms. Copeland told Glasstire, “Twenty-five years ago when I started writing about art and artists, there were few writers who were writing from an artist’s perspective. My goal has always been to champion underrepresented voices and make contemporary art accessible to the larger public. I am so honored to write for Glasstire and contribute to a living historical archive of Texas art and artists. Thank you for recognizing my work.”
Bill Davenport and Rainey Knudson. Photo: Jenny Antill
Bill Davenport, the Houston-based writer and artist, is the second recipient of Glasstire’s 2025 Texas Art Writing Award, for a lifetime of exceptional writing and impact on the publication and on Texas’ art scene. Glasstire’s Founding Publisher, Rainey Knudson, named Mr. Davenport to receive this award, noting his tenacity and bravery in putting his ideas into the world.
Mr. Davenport was Glasstire’s first-ever contributor back in 2001, when Ms. Knudson contacted him about writing a column for the publication. He went on to write regularly for Glasstire and serve in many official, interim, and unofficial roles for the publication, culminating with his tenure as Editor-in-Chief from 2013 to 2015. You can read his writing here.
Mr. Davenport told Glasstire, “It’s nice to get an award for doing something that just seemed like a good idea at the time. It’s even more gratifying to see Glasstire and the Texas art scene going strong 25 years later!”
Ms. Copeland and Mr. Davenport were recognized at Glasstire’s 25th Anniversary Party on May 8, which honored Ms. Knudson, Glasstire’s Founding Publisher, and celebrated the publication’s silver anniversary year.
About Colette Copeland
Colette Copeland is an interdisciplinary visual artist, arts educator, and arts writer based in Granbury, Texas. Inspired by dada and fluxus, her artistic practice combines personal narratives, history, and contemporary culture to address global issues such as the environmental crisis and gender oppression. She uses a variety of media, including video, photography, sound, performance, printmaking, and sculptural installation.
Copeland has written cultural and art criticism for Glasstire since 2011. Additionally, she contributes to Arteidolia, an online arts and creative writing journal. She has also written for The Photo Review, Afterimage Journal of Media Arts and Cultural Criticism, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Eutopia, and Exposure Journal. She is a member of AICA, the International Association of Art Critics.
About Bill Davenport
Bill Davenport grew up in a suburb of Washington, D.C., where he roamed on his ten-speed bike collecting trash and refashioning his finds into a fleet of homemade boats, a hovercraft, and a printing press. He went on to get degrees in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of Massachusetts. In 1990 he drove to Texas with a mattress strapped to the top of his truck to be a Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
In 1995 he began publishing Artletter, “Houston’s Timely Magazine of Art,” which he wrote for, edited, and distributed bimonthly until August 1997. In 2001 he became Glasstire’s first-ever writer, establishing a regular column, Tire Iron. He held many other jobs at Glasstire throughout the years, including art fair booth designer, news contributor, and Editor. Throughout his career, he additionally contributed writing to Art Lies, Art Papers, The Public News, and the Houston Chronicle.
From 2008 to 2022, he ran Bill’s Junk, a junk, art, and oddities shop in the Houston Heights. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at The MAC and Angstrom Gallery in Dallas, Inman Gallery in Houston, and Sala Diaz in San Antonio, among other spaces. His work is featured in numerous public and private collections.
About Glasstire
Glasstire is the oldest online-only art magazine in the country. We are proud to have promoted the visual arts in Texas to a local, regional, and national audience since our founding in 2001. Glasstire is the only publication in our state producing serious art journalism and criticism on a daily basis. We are the publication of record for the Texas visual art community.
Our name is an homage to the glass tire sculptures of Robert Rauschenberg, who hailed from the small coastal town of Port Arthur, Texas. In tribute to his remarkable achievement as an artist, our work recognizes that great art can come from anywhere. Also, the idea of traveling great distances, at great speed, with great clarity appeals to us, both figuratively as a metaphor for what we do, and literally — because we do a lot of long-distance driving across Texas.
We are a nonprofit 501(c)(3) publication, and we’re supported in part by grants from The Houston Endowment, The Brown Foundation, Inc., the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, the Still Water Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Greater Houston Community Foundation, the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, the Texas Commission for the Arts, Humanities Texas, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.