We are pleased to announce the establishment of the Glasstire Texas Art Writing Awards, and to name Ruben C. Cordova and Robert Craig Bunch as the prize’s inaugural recipients.
Glasstire has founded this award to recognize exceptional art writing in Texas. As Glasstire’s Publisher, Brandon Zech, says, “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.”
The award is by nomination only. To decide the winners, Glasstire reached out to a statewide selection of arts professionals who shared the pieces of writing and writers who made an impact on them in the last calendar year. Glasstire then made a decision based on their recommendations.
This year, Glasstire is giving one award for exceptional Texas art writing that appeared in Glasstire in 2024, and one award for writing published elsewhere in 2024. The scope of this second award is purposefully wide to include writing that appeared in national and international newspapers, academic writings, books, and in other various outlets and forms.
San Antonio-based historian, writer, and artist Ruben C. Cordova is the recipient of the 2024 Texas Art Writing Award for Writing on Glasstire. Mr. Cordova has contributed to Glasstire since 2018, and is known for his long-form essays, reviews, and other articles that oftentimes combine research with visual and critical analysis of his subjects. Mr. Cordova wrote 10 pieces for Glasstire in 2024, including new iterations of his yearly series examining Catrina imagery and visual depictions of Apollo and Daphne. Additional articles include the much-discussed “Debunking Alamo Myths” and “Is it Time for San Antonio’s Fiesta to Secede from San Jacinto? Part II.”
Mr. Cordova told Glasstire, “It was an honor to receive the Glasstire writing award, and I have deeply enjoyed writing for the publication for several years. Glasstire has given me the opportunity to address an extremely wide range of topics, often at considerable length, with numerous photographs. As always, I hope my writing will be of value to students and teachers, at the present time, and in the future as well.”
Ruben C. Cordova and Robert Craig Bunch
Robert Craig Bunch, the San Antonio-based author and artist, is the second recipient of Glasstire’s 2024 Texas Art Writing Award, for his new book The Art of Dreams, Visions, Other Worlds: Interviews with Texas Artists. Published by Texas A&M University Press in December 2024 and featuring 60 interviews with artists as far ranging as Wayne Gilbert, Angelbert Metoyer, Juan de Dios Mora, Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Julie Speed, Hiromi Stringer, and Albert Alvarez, the book is an important document of Texas’ art scene in which artists, in their own words, give insights into their practice. This is Mr. Bunch’s second book; his first publication, The Art of Found Objects: Interviews with Texas Artists, was published by Texas A&M University Press in 2017.
Mr. Bunch told Glasstire, “My two books of interviews with Texas artists owe their origins to the Texas artists who have inspired me, my curiosity about their creative journeys, and my conviction that they deserve to be better known in and far beyond Texas. I am often as amazed at their words as I am at their art. The title themes of The Art of Dreams, Visions, Other Worlds originate in my lifelong fascination with dreams.”
A book signing for The Art of Dreams, Visions, Other Worlds is happening on Saturday, May 17, from 2-4 p.m. at Hooks-Epstein Galleries in Houston, in conjunction with the gallery’s current exhibitions.
About Robert Craig Bunch
Robert Craig Bunch is a native of Houston and has lived in San Antonio since 2011. He spent 20 years as a librarian in schools across Houston and Coldspring, and later at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, where he retired in 2018. His reviews, articles, and interviews have appeared in Booklist, Artlies, Folk Art, The Art Book, Kyoto Journal, Glasstire, and other periodicals. His books from Texas A&M University Press include The Art of Found Objects: Interviews with Texas Artists (2016) and The Art of Dreams, Visions, Other Worlds: Interviews with Texas Artists (2024). He is also an artist and has self-published two books of his Life Magazine collages.
About Ruben C. Cordova
Ruben C. Cordova is an art historian with a BA from Brown University and a PhD from UC Berkeley. He has taught at five universities and has published more than 80 articles and reviews. He received a Rabkin Foundation travel grant to support articles for Glasstire about Henry Clay Frick and the new Frick Collection galleries, and about the new Rockefeller galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Cordova has written or contributed to more than 20 catalogs and books, including Con Safo, the first book on a Chicano art group, published by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Press. His Rolando Briseño retrospective catalog (published by Centro de Artes in San Antonio) and an essay in the Latinx Reader (UC Press) were recently published, and his essay in Sixties Surreal (published by Yale University Press and the Whitney Museum of American Art) will appear later this year.
Mr. Cordova has curated or co-curated 34 exhibitions, including several major retrospectives of artists Jesse Treviño, Mel Casas, and Ángel Rodríguez-Díaz. He has also organized survey exhibitions, including The Other Side of the Alamo: Art Against the Myth and The Day of the Dead in Art. As an artist, Mr. Cordova has participated in 46 exhibitions, including four solo presentations, the last of which was Besos de la Muerte (Kisses of Death) at Centro de Artes in San Antonio.
About Glasstire
Glasstire is an online publication that covers visual art in Texas. Its mission is to expand the conversation about art in the state. It has been in continuous operation since January 2001. It is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) publication, supported in part by grants from The Houston Endowment, The Brown Foundation, Inc., the National Endowment for the Arts, the Greater Houston Community Foundation, the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance, and the Texas Commission for the Arts. Glasstire’s name is an homage to Robert Rauschenberg’s sculptures of tires cast in glass. The artworks evoke traveling great distances, at great speed, with great clarity.
