Mark Bowe
Mark Bowe worked his way through West Virginia University as a coal miner, earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration. He is a craftsman, a businessman, a historian, and a passable break-dancer (if you give him enough room). Bowe also holds a master’s degree in safety management from WVU's John Chambers College of Business and Economics.
Bowe began his career as a coal miner and he keeps his blue-collar roots close to his heart and in everything he does. In 1996, Bowe created his business, Barnwood Living, where he and his crew rescue pioneer-era structures and give them new life. Bowe took this business and went on to host and star in the 15-seasons-strong Magnolia Network (formerly DIY) hit tv show “Barnwood Builders.”
Commanding households around the globe, Bowe’s antics and ability to connect with real people, no matter their walk of life, secures the popularity of this docu-series that was the most-watched show in the DIY network’s history. The series maintains a top spot on the Magnolia Network, as well as home on the MAX streaming platform with over 97 million subscribers worldwide. Bowe has expanded Barnwood Living as a lifestyle brand including men’s gifts, apparel and home goods. These products embody the spirit of hard work, kindness, and pride In a job well done.
Over a career spanning thirty years, Bowe has built and explored, pushed limits and discovered that the route to success is often outside the box. He’s honed traditional old-world skills and had the fortune to work on exceptional projects. Bowe has replaced a slate roof on Andrew Johnson’s house, hand-blown glass, made bricks, built houses without a single nail, hand-cut stone from a cliffside to erect a chimney, made cedar shakes, and forged his own tools in the blacksmith shop he built. Bowe has stood inside Native American cliff dwellings that less than 100 people have visited in 10,000 years and discovered Finnish settlements in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Uncovering the how and why—reanimating history not just explaining it—is what ignites Bowe, and it’s what keeps his audience leaning in to see more.
In resurrecting the past, Bowe lights on ways to build for the future. He has repurposed a shipping container as a log cabin and invented a folding house. He holds the patent on a R300, tornado-proof, hurricane-proof, and fireproof house design. Bowe seeks to change the way we think about housing and shelter forever, but to do that, he returns to the past again and again to find the way forward.