Jeannette Lorenz started her home-based business Valley & Mountain Wear in 1999 shortly after she moved to Valemount. She started designing and producing fleece wear and has since expanded into natural cosmetics, jewellery, and wrote and published a cookbook “Cooking for Lukas” A Cookbook for (not only) Beginners”; it is inspired by the exchange student Lukas, who stayed with her a few years ago.

            For many years she has worked with glass, starting with stained glass. She has evolved into fused glass, making unique earrings, necklaces, and embellishes crystal glass nail files. She is also a founding member of the Whistlestop Gallery in McBride and the Mountain Driftwood Gallery in Valemount.

            Jeannette is a retired Professional Engineer, originally from Berlin, Germany. She moved to Canada in 1996; She first lived in Vancouver to “get her feet on the ground”, then moved to Jasper, and in 1998, to Valemount. She is following in her mother’s (painter and potter) and her aunt’s (potter) footsteps as an artisan.

           She says that she loves Valemount, because here she gets everything she needs on a daily basis, like nature galore, swimming, hiking & cycling from spring to fall and skating & cross-country skiing in the winter. For everything else she visits cities in Canada and other countries. She loves travelling, especially on trains, languages, CBC Radio, cooking, reading, music festivals, camping, and meeting friends for a beer.