JENNIFER LOWE-ANKER is a successful visual artist and the founder of the Khumbu Climbing School and Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation (see www.alexlowe.org).
Born in Missoula, Jennifer spent parts of her childhood working in the fields of her grandparent's homesteaded property in Montana's Grasshopper Valley. Lowe's paintings are rendered in the vivid color and rich texture of livestock markers and capture the whimsical images from her imagination and the memories of her Montana upbringing.
Lowe constructs her own frames and decorates them with a folk art quality - each of which carries an element of the painting that it is made for - giving her finished work a unique character. Jennifer began using the oily paintsticks in 1985 while a student at Montana State University. Since graduating in 1987, Lowe has been featured in 22 shows throughout the West. Her work has been shown alongside such well known Western artists as Thom Ross, Howard Post, Larry Pirnie and Donna Howell Sickels. Lowe's appeal has landed her work in private collections of such luminaries as Peter Fonda, Michael Keaton, Jeff Bridges and Jerry Spence, as well as in the corporate collections of Patagonia and Chronicle Books.
She lives in Bozeman, MT with her husband, Conrad Anker and their three children-Max, Sam and Isaac.
JON KRAKAUER is an American writer and mountaineer, primarily known for his writing about the outdoors and mountain-climbing. He is the author of best-selling non-fiction booksInto the Wild, Into Thin Air, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillmanas well as numerous magazine articles.
