Born in rural Walton County, in Georgia in 1947, to a family of merchants and gamblers, this was the world of segregation, lynching, and cotton. When Mark was ten years old, living in rural Georgia, he heard Ray Charles’ voice and realized that every word he’d ever heard about black people was a lie — from his parents, from his teachers, from his coaches. In the 4th grade, Mendel moved to Atlanta, and in 9th grade to Evanston, Illinois where he finished high school.  In his sophomore year, he stumbled upon Buddhism (which rocked his world), and he began to write haiku, which launched his efforts as an artist. He attended The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was enrolled in the Writing Seminars and received a Master of Arts degree in 1968. The following fall, Mark was hired by the renowned Tuskeegee Institute to teaching First-Year Composition and American Literature; a transformative experience, living in a black community as one of the few whites confirmed what he had heard in the voice of Ray Charles so long ago. Following Tuskeegee, Mark decided he did not want to continue in academia; he moved to downeast Maine to write poetry and work outdoors.  After a winter cutting boltwood for the paper mills, he fell into stone work and began his training with master masons: Guy Leeman and Mertin Reynolds. A chance meeting with the legendary German artist Otto Piene, who had arrived in the US to direct the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, resulted in Mark becoming a Fellow at the Center from 1977 to 1982, and he met and worked with artists from around the world. Mark returned to Georgia in 1976 where he did some of his most rewarding collaborations, working with children in Columbus teaching poetry and then painting the kids’ poems on school buildings as a large-scale public art installation. As a mason, his stone work has been recognized for his collaborations with architects and private clients.

Mark continues to make sculpture and write poetry, and owns Monterey Masonry, doing architectural stone and brick work since 1982.  In 2019, he opened Woodstove Gallery in Great Barrington, displaying and selling Scandinavian wood stoves as well as curating exhibitions of contemporary artists. In 2012, Mark was asked by Zen Master Soeng-Hyang to design a memorial for Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn, the founder of the Providence Zen Center and the Kwan Um School of Zen.  Made of stone and glass, the memorial was dedicated in 2014 in a public ceremony; this effort was one of the rare moments where Mark felt his stone practice, his art practice and his spiritual practice came together. He resides in Sheffield, Massachusetts and is currently developing a large public art installation for MASS MoCA in North Adams.