Today we’d like to introduce you to Mark Exline.
Hi Mark, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Yeah! I grew up in Central Florida, so I did what every gay kid who grew up in the shadow of Disney does – high school theatre. I figured out pretty quickly I didn’t want to be onstage, but I was already deep into art classes, so I found myself designing and painting instead. One teacher pushed me to apply to college, and that decision snowballed into eight years of school and an MFA in Theatre Design and Technology from UMKC.
The MFA program was pretty unique at the time, with a heavy emphasis on traditional drawing and rendering, and most practical work was done as co-productions with professional companies in town. I came in with a lot of experience, started getting calls from local producers, and eventually designed “Marilyn/God” with one of my closest collaborators, Heidi Van, which got us my first Pitch Award. From there I worked through COVID doing everything from decorating the second-largest Christmas tree in Kansas City to designing a full jersey for REXY, the Union Station dinosaur.
In 2021 Anthony Magliano and Mica Thomas offered me the chance to start working with Quixotic, where I’ve been a Core Company member ever since working on projects seen by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
In 2024 I won Best Local Artist in the Pitch, which genuinely caught me off guard. I’m terrible at social media, so knowing people voted for me organically meant a lot.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Not even a little. In 2022, at 31, I had spinal surgery in the middle of designing two productions and starting a new job. My left arm stopped working. I had to turn down career-making work because the dates were too close to my surgery, and I won’t pretend that didn’t feel like a gut punch. Losing momentum as an artist is terrifying, and having it happen twice in two years was devastating, but I was never abandoned. My closest collaborators held space for me, and my amazing husband Christopher spent five months driving me to appointments, administering medications, and opening jars I couldn’t open myself. Coming back from that forced me to stop carrying the literal weight of everything and start trusting the people around me. I design better now than I did before the surgery. I am more intentional about the work that I do.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I work primarily as a Scenic, Costume, and Installation Designer and Production Manager on large in-person events and productions. If you’ve lived in Kansas City for the past ten years, you’ve almost certainly seen my work…you just didn’t know it was mine. I’ve designed for Terra Luna, Dark Forest, Union Station, KC Rep, and most of the professional theatre companies in town, plus a few outside it, including New York City Children’s Theatre.
What I care most about is making things that feel genuinely specific to the client. Things that couldn’t exist anywhere else. Custom work isn’t cheap, but nothing is right now, so you may as well get something amazing. I designed a 20-foot longhorn skull covered in magenta-tinted mirror tiles for Whiskey Dynamite, covered a Parade of Hearts entry in thousands of hand-cut iridescent vinyl scales, and designed elastic walls with hand-painted wallpaper for Dracula at KC Rep that looked solid until performers reached through them. I’ve picked up and put down more hobbies than I can remember, which comes in handy when someone asks if you can make a basketweave corset or build an eight-foot Kraken puppet. I’ve been asked if I can design or make a lot of incredibly specific things, and the answer is usually yes.
How do you think about luck?
Luck is always part of it. Being in the right room, meeting the right person, accidentally ordering too much of the right material. That stuff matters. My process involves a lot of research, sampling, and watery sketches where interpreting chaos is as important as clear intent. So far, riding that uncertainty has worked out, so I try not to examine that too closely.
Pricing:
- I do take commissions, and love hearing about new projects. My starting project rate is $1000.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.mexlinedesigns.com
- Instagram: @mexlinedesigns
- Other: [email protected]
