Vielehr was born in 1945 in Chicago and grew up in Boulder. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1969 from Colorado State University, where he also pursued graduate work in the field of special studies of sculpture. While building a career that includes both a solid exhibition schedule and numerous public and private commissions, he also has been a curator and instructor. He keeps alive the tradition of the FORM group founded in the early 1980s by several area sculptors who work in abstraction. While it might appear logical to term Bill Vielehr a sculptor, this Boulder-based artist sees himself as the maker of three-dimensional drawings and paintings in metal. His cast and fabricated aluminum and bronze wall-mounted works and large-format floor pieces are rooted in the heart of drawing: the mark. In early works, Vielehr pulled from the classic figurative modeling techniques he learned as a student, and employed the human figure as a pure visual form. He would then fragment the figure to focus on a single section of the anatomy, thus abstracting realism. But over the years, he began to reference the human form in a way that related to large-scale contemporary sculpture and to its setting. In the process, this avid outdoorsman seeks to integrate man and his environment through sculptural form.