Drew Carman is a multi-disciplinary artist and award-winning landscape architect based in Austin, Texas. While pursuing an MLA in Athens, Georgia in the early 2000s, he was introduced to oil painting through the friend and mentorship of renowned painter, musician, and folklorist Art Rosenbaum. Like Art, he developed a multifaceted approach to creative work often overlapping storytelling, music, oil painting, and in Drew’s case, the design of public parks and open spaces.
Carman moved to Austin, Texas in 2014 to work as one of the statewide planners for Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), where he led planning for some of Texas’ premier State Parks. He then took a role as Director of Park Planning and Design for one of the largest landscape architecture firms in the nation, RVi Planning + Landscape Architecture, where he oversaw the firm’s public practice in Texas for nearly a decade. All the while, Carman continued to expand his body of work in oil painting, sculpture, fabrication and music.
This diversity of mediums, what he refers to collectively as his "design cohort" ensures his creative ideas have a variety of outlets to be developed, refined, destroyed, built back and finally realized.
He opened Design Cohort, LLC in 2026.
meet the founder & principal
ARTIST STATEMENT
My artistic practice is a loose network of creative pursuits, all compelled by and in the service of storytelling. I’m an oil painter, a designer, a landscape architect, fabricator, and musician. Just like any healthy ecosystem, this diversity is what makes it whole and resilient. Where one tool may not be able to capture my creative intent, another can pick it up. Where a song can’t find the right words to sing, a painting may. But no matter the medium, storytelling permeates throughout my art and is the aesthetic by which I hope to connect with my audience. Often allegorical in nature, my artwork considers stories of human connection, of our environment, of the past & present, of the good and even sometimes of the lowdown.
Tiny Talks
February 18th, 2025 (Volume 6)
“Drew Carman shares his journey from a childhood filled with outdoor adventures, inspired by his father, to becoming a landscape architect focused on integrating the history and natural allure of sites into his designs. Working for Texas Parks and Wildlife and private developments, he emphasizes maintaining a connection to a place's past, like ensuring new parks respect historical uses and native ecologies, ultimately enriching community engagement with natural spaces through thoughtful, story-driven design.”