State Artists for 2025 & 2026
The Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA) is pleased to announce the Texas State Legislature’s 2025 and 2026 appointments to the positions of state poet laureate, state musician-nonclassical, state musician-classical, state musician, state two-dimensional artist and state three-dimensional artist.
- Octavio Quintanilla
- Miranda Lambert
- Alecia Lawyer
- Angelbert Metoyer
- Steve Parker
- Kevin Prufer
- Norah Jones
- Ana Maria Martinez
- Letitia Huckaby
- Linda Ridgway
2025 TEXAS STATE POET LAUREATE – OCTAVIO QUINTANILLA
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Photo Credit: Paris Quintanilla
Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collections, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014), The Book of Wounded Sparrows (Texas Review Press, 2024), which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets (University of Arizona Press, 2025).
Octavio is the founder and director of the literature & arts festival, VersoFrontera, publisher of Alabrava Press, and former Poet Laureate of San Antonio. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published and exhibited widely. He teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Our Lady of the Lake University and was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
2025 TEXAS STATE MUSICIAN-NONCLASSICAL – MIRANDA LAMBERT
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Photo Credit: James Macari
Miranda Lambert is the 2025 Texas State Musician-Nonclassical. Born in Longview, she has been honored by the GRAMMY Awards, the Academy of Country Music Awards, and the Country Music Association Awards. Two of Lambert’s albums, Platinum and Wildcard, have received the GRAMMY Award for Best Country Album, and she has released multiple chart-topping songs and had several platinum-selling albums. She was listed as one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time magazine in 2022. In 2024, Lambert was awarded the Country Icon Award at the People’s Choice Country Awards.
2025 TEXAS STATE MUSICIAN-CLASSICAL – ALECIA LAWYER
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Photo Credit: Daniel Ortiz
Alecia Lawyer is the 2025 Texas State Musician-Classical. She is the Founder, Artistic Director, and Principal Oboist of ROCO, a professional music ensemble in Houston that has been called a trailblazer and arts disrupter and is leading the sector in innovation. Named by Musical America as one of classical music’s Top 30 Influencers for 2015, Lawyer has recorded for John Cage, soloed with Rostropovich, given a recital at Carnegie Hall, recorded with the Sorbonne Orchestra, and performed with various orchestras and chamber groups in France and Germany. She has received numerous awards and recognitions, including the Sigma Alpha Iota Musician of the Year, and Outstanding Chamber Orchestra Founder from the Houston Chronicle.
2025 TEXAS STATE VISUAL ARTIST 2D – ANGELBERT METOYER
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Photo Credit: Ana Lavalle
Angelbert Metoyer is the 2025 Texas State Artist-2D. He is a Houston visual artist on the forefront of afrofuturism. Metoyer’s art explores memory and social history through the lenses of science, philosophy, and religion. He works in various media, and incorporates nontraditional materials that include coal, glass, debris, oil, tar, mirrors, and gold dust. Since 1994, Metoyer has had numerous solo exhibitions, and group shows including the Venice Biennale and Art Basel Miami. He has work in the permanent collections of the US Department of State; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Leipzig, Germany, among others.
2025 TEXAS STATE VISUAL ARTIST 3D – STEVE PARKER
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Photo Credit: Courtesy Blanton Museum of Art
Steve Parker is the 2025 Texas State Artist-3D. He is an Austin artist and musician who creates sculptural ecosystems that transform spaces into large-scale collaborative performances. He is the recipient of the 2025 Creative Capital Award, the Rome Prize, the Pollock-Krasner Award, a Fulbright Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Parker has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the American Academy in Rome, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Fusebox Festival, the Lincoln Center Festival, and South by Southwest. Parker is Associate Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at San Antonio and Artistic Director of Collide Arts.
2026 TEXAS STATE POET LAUREATE – KEVIN PRUFER
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Photo Credit: Wyatt McSpadden
Kevin Prufer’s newest books are The Fears (Copper Canyon Press, 2023), winner of the 2024 Rilke Prize, and Sleepaway: a Novel (Acre Books, 2024). Among his eight other books are Churches, which was named one of the best ten books of 2015 by The New York Times, and How He Loved Them, which was long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the Julie Suk Award for the best poetry book from the American literary press. Prufer’s work appears widely in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, The Paris Review, and The New Republic, among others. He is Professor of English at The University of Houston, where he also directs The Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to rediscovering great, long forgotten authors. He also teaches at the Lesley University Low-Residency MFA Program.
2026 TEXAS STATE MUSICIAN-NONCLASSICAL – NORAH JONES
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Photo Credit: Joelle Grace Taylor
Norah Jones is the 2026 Texas State Musician-Nonclassical. Raised in Grapevine and a graduate of the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing & Visual Arts in Dallas, Jones has sold more than 53 million records worldwide. Her debut 2002 record, Come Away with Me, earned Jones five GRAMMY Awards, including the awards for Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best New Artist. Her subsequent studio albums all gained platinum status, selling over a million copies each. Billboard magazine named her the top jazz artist of the 2000s decade. She was ranked 60th on Billboard‘s artists of the ’00s decade chart. In total, Jones has won ten GRAMMY Awards.
2026 TEXAS STATE MUSICIAN-CLASSICAL – ANA MARIA MARTINEZ
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Photo Credit: Ashkan Roayaee
GRAMMY Award-winning soprano Ana María Martínez of Houston is the 2026 Texas State Musician-Classical. She is known for her stunning portrayals of the title roles of Rusalka, Carmen, and Florencia in Florencia en el Amazonas, as well as Mimi in La Bohème, Cio–Cio-San in Madama Butterfly, and Desdemona in Otello, among countless others. These roles have taken her to the Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera de Puerto Rico, and Santa Fe Opera, as well as to Opera National de Paris, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna Staatsoper, and the Glyndebourne Festival, among many others. She is a Professor of Voice at the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University.
2026 TEXAS STATE VISUAL ARTIST 2D – LETITIA HUCKABY
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Photo Credit: Paul Leicht
Letitia Huckaby is the 2026 Texas State Artist-2D. Her research-based practice combines photographic prints and fabrics to reexamine history and its contemporary connection to the black experience through portraiture. Huckaby has been included in various exhibitions, notably at Art League Houston, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Studio School of Harlem, and the Texas Biennial. Her work is included in several collections, including the Library of Congress and the Samella Lewis Contemporary Art Collection at Scripps College. Huckaby was named the 2022 Texas Artist of the Year by Art League Houston. She is the co-founder of Kinfolk House, a collaborative project space in Fort Worth.
2026 TEXAS STATE VISUAL ARTIST 3D – LINDA RIDGWAY
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Photo Credit: Teresa Rafidi
Linda Ridgway is the 2026 Texas State Artist-3D. She creates poetic bronze wall reliefs that convey both autobiographical and cultural imagery, with themes including femininity, tradition, and heritage. Her work juxtaposes the delicacy of the textures of lace and crochet work with the monochromatic and industrial fortitude of metalwork. She has participated in various solo and group exhibitions including Linda Ridgway: A Survey, Poetics of Form at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Dallas Museum of Art; and Commanding Space: Women Sculptors of Texas at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth.
