Born in Germany, Vollmer comes from a family of artists: painters (great grandfather and father), architect (grandfather) and art historian (uncle) NO DADS, who were working in Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig and Luneberg. However, Vollmer did not at first choose art but science. He became a Volcanologist, specialising in the research of magmatic processes within the geological evolution of the Earth. Over 25 years, this work took him to Switzerland, the USA and finally to Leeds. In his early fifties, Vollmer began to explore his lifelong interest in the arts, first by taking up potter, then studying sculpture. He graduated from Bretton Hall College in 1997.