Mark Vollenweider

was born in Waterloo, Iowa on June 11, 1980; graduated from the University of Iowa in 2010 with a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts; has made drawings for the literary magazine “Draft: The Journal of Process”, one of which was featured in the Boston Globe in 2014. Mark lives in Iowa City, Iowa, working as an artist & bus driver.

“My drawings are looks into my life, experiences & observations. Growing up Catholic, living in Iowa, & trying to manage attention deficit disorder.

“I prefer not knowing where I’m going in my drawings. I might start with an idea, drawing a person from an advertisement, & it ends up looking like my fourth grade teacher. Once I started drawing a security guard that in the end looked like Kevin Bacon. The drawings can be a collage of many different things: notes, quotes, faces & hands, geometrical shapes, furniture, parts of bodies; I write down things I’ve overheard, pictures of babies, politicians, mugshots, & obituaries from the news, the carved busts of philosophers, & birds.

“My drawings are quick, but detailed. I use pens & pencils, drawing in sketchbooks, sheets of Bristol Board, rolls of butcher’s paper, post-it notes & bus transfers.”