Keith Lowe grew up on the outskirts of Marion. After his three older sisters all chose to attend Indiana Wesleyan University (IWU), the choice for Keith to become a wildcat was only natural. Encouraged by one sister’s suggestion, Lowe decided early that he wanted to pursue commercial art. He quickly began taking classes with Eric Reeves and Ron Mazellan – two IWU professors whose work displayed what kinds of career were possible. Reeves, an IWU alumnus, was a ghost cartoonist for Garfield, while Mazellan had worked in entertainment art in Los Angeles and was illustrating children’s books. Meeting these two professors and seeing their work proved revelatory.
While Lowe was highly focused on his education and future career, he lacked spiritual leadership and was in need of strong role models.
“I saw their talent and I coveted the work they were doing,” Lowe reflects. “That was what established them as people I listened to, but what I really needed to learn from them was how to live.”
Looking back, Lowe sees the Lord working in Him through these professors as they spoke into his life and gave him the foundations he needed to succeed – both artistically and spiritually. He also met the love of his life, Joanna, during his final semester, and ever since then she’s been an amazing friend, supporter, and spouse.
“I’m so thankful that the people there didn’t see me for who I was, but for who I could be and what the Lord could do through me,” Lowe says. “It means a lot that they decided it was worth investing in someone like me.”
Because of his experiences as a student, Professor Lowe now feels well-equipped to help students build their own foundations, rather than building an altar to their artistic gifts. Because of the variety of experiences he’s had throughout his life, he believes he has a broad context to teach students from, highlighting Christ’s presence in both the good and the bad. As a teacher, he loves getting to come alongside students, serving the Lord by communicating truth to them and planting seeds.
After graduation, Lowe pursued his dream of working in commercial art. He joined Brady Games, a publishing company in Indianapolis working on licensed books and products for video game companies. Over the course of the eight years Lowe was there, Brady Games created hundreds of books. Throughout his experiences, he learned to work not just as a designer but as a team member and as a leader. Lowe became familiar with editors, authors, production designers, printers, licensing managers, and more as he got a sense of what the publishing industry looked like – particularly in the field of game books.
While this job was in many ways a delight, it wasn’t without its complications. While most of the game books Lowe was asked to work on were positive experiences, one particular project’s content immediately struck him as being outside the realm of what he was comfortable having his name attached to.
“I remember feeling very nervous about that, and I told my director, ‘I need you to know I can't work on this title.’ And there's always risk in that, but she backed me, and I was proud of her for that,” Lowe recalls. “And the publisher said, ‘Well, okay, but there may be a future where you have to work on something you disagree with.’ And I was thinking in the back of my mind, ‘no, I don't.’ So, in those moments, you have to kind of be prepared to ask yourself what you’re going to do. And I had to start to mentally accept the possibility that I may not be able to stay.”
When offered an art book for Mortal Kombat, Lowe again said no, convicted by the violent nature of the franchise. That conviction – to work only on projects he could proudly show his family – has guided him ever since.
During the same time Lowe worked for Brady Games, he also worked with a Brady Games editor (Brian Shotton), colleague Kenny Sims, and a fellow IWU alum with sculpting talents (Tom Mason) to make tabletop games. As the son of small business owners, the entrepreneurial spirit was ingrained in Lowe.
“Everything I was learning at Brady was essential for me to be able to do that, and I got to bring my illustration talents into it,” Lowe remembers. “Then, in 2013, we had a massively successful crowdfunding campaign where we launched a fantasy game called Myth, and that allowed us to leave our publishing jobs. That was a wonderful season of creativity.”
It was also one of the most challenging and stressful seasons of Lowe’s life, as he found himself suddenly running a business with a very small team. While this period of time was highly rewarding in many ways, a conversation with a customer at Gen Con (a large gaming convention held in Indiana every year) caused him to stop and reflect.
“At one point in our conversation, he looked at me, and said, ‘You're living the dream.’ And, you know, I realized that I had bought into that statement, which was a lie, actually,” Lowe says. “The lie is that ‘this is as good as it gets.’ In many ways, the enemy had planted that seed. I had the sense my success was built off this area of ego that was not necessarily sustainable.”
During his senior year, Mazellan invited Lowe to teach a class on digital painting. Lowe declined but promised himself he’d return to teach someday. Years later, now running a small business and constantly trying to keep up with the responsibilities that came with it, Lowe had the idea that he and Mason could go back and teach a class at IWU. Proposing a class called Game Concept and Development, the duo quickly got approval from then division chair Rod Crossman. Focused on board game design, the class rapidly became popular among design and illustration students.
“I began to see teaching as something I potentially wanted to invest in,” Lowe remembers.
Soon after, he began his MFA in Illustration and started teaching while freelancing and commuting between Indianapolis and Marion – all while he and Joanna became parents.
“That was one of the busiest times of my life, and my wife and I were just trying to figure out how to make it work, but the Lord was with us every step of the way.”
Lowe loves helping students see their perspectives and dreams as worthy of pursuit and calling them to the tenacity and focus they need to succeed in their work. He also likes showing God’s role in art and inviting students to let God have control – lessons he himself learned during his education at IWU.
In addition to teaching, Lowe recently published his second children’s book, Your Body! The Fuel Factory. Born from a graduate children’s book class and his kids’ curiosity about digestion, the story is both fun and educational. Its blue-collar characters were inspired by Lowe’s father, a mechanic.
“It has trade labor jobs, science, and educational content,” Lowe says. “It also points to the fact that our bodies are created. The more I study about the body, the more wonder and awe I have about God's creation. There’s this sense of the divine in everything, and you can’t escape it. This book just magnifies that particular element of creation.”
While Lowe already had experience in publishing prior to getting into children’s books, due to his work with Brady Games and his small game business, the experiences had multiple major differences. He had already learned a lot of the business, production, manufacturing, shipping, and fulfillment aspects of publishing, which made those at least straightforward. In previous instances he had been part of a team, however, with most of the development and writing handled by others. As a result, creating children’s books like Your Body! The Fuel Factory has required growing as a writer.
“That’s something I continue to wrestle with because the imposter syndrome is very real, and writing isn't something that I'm trained in,” Lowe shares. “I still don't consider writing my forte, but I I'm getting better.”
While Lowe doesn’t see himself writing a novel at any point, he does believe that due to the storytelling overlap between illustration and writing, it’s been a tool he’s able to learn and utilize. Lowe is a firm believer that part of the process of becoming good at something is being bad at it at first and then taking the time and effort to build skill, even if it takes a while.
“Anytime you do something new, you have to accept that you're going to struggle at first. Nobody likes to be bad at something, but it's part of the steps to get better,” Lowe says. “One of the dangers with AI is that it makes you feel like you're very good at something without the labor of growth and the experience of failure. I think it's important sometimes for us to be bad at things so we can learn; it’s important for us to teach our students the value of honing your skills.”
Lowe hopes that Your Body! The Fuel Factory is written in such a way that it will find the right audience. While not an explicitly Christian work, Lowe’s faith permeates the text – from scripture as part of the dedication to the overall emphasis on how amazingly and intricately designed the body’s digestive system is.
“It's a seed, if they're not someone that follows Jesus,” Lowe says. “‘If my body is designed, if that's a true statement, what does that mean for me? How can I be so intricately designed if there isn’t a creator?’ I pray that question becomes one they pursue the answer to.”
Lowe remembers his team launching the Myth Kickstarter right before a mission trip with his wife, only to return to the US to discover that it was snowballing in scale. He remembers going to bed one night with the Kickstarter around $700,000 and waking up to it being at $800,000. This money proved essential to production but also invited additional outside expectations. When trying to crowdfund for children’s books, Lowe has found a smaller audience but also more manageable expectations. Hitting deadlines and delivering a quality product is highly important to Lowe, and he hopes that his current projects are always the best work he’s done yet.
One aspect of creating children’s books he’s especially enjoyed is getting to hear his central audience’s thoughts. During spring term of last year, Lowe spent a week with kids at a local school talking about the book. Getting to see the kids’ excited reactions to his work meant a lot and he’s delighted that this is the audience he’s currently writing for.
Looking back on his career and his time at IWU as a student and now as a professor, Lowe believes one essential thing for recent graduates to keep in mind is that being creative is an essential part of how God made us. By staying connected and creative, we can actively connect with God through the act of sub-creation.
“We’re created in the image of God – the Imago Dei – and we ourselves have that same desire to create,” Lowe says. “It doesn’t mean that what you’re creating is going well or coming to you easily, but through that process we mirror the kind of work that formed us, and there is joy to be found through it.”
He also points to Jesus’ instructions to the disciples during the feeding of the five thousand as reassuring as an analogy for the way God calls us to use our gifts.
“Mark 6:37 is an incredible statement by Jesus to his disciples. He tells them, ‘You give them something to eat.’ He’s telling them to take their measly loaves and fish and let Him multiply them,” Lowe says. “He doesn’t tell them what he’s going to do, he just asks them to be obedient. He doesn’t need us to spread His message, but He does tell us to.”
Those interested in Your Body! The Fuel Factory can learn more or purchase it at keithloweart.com/product-page/your-body-the-fuel-factory.
Follow your passion for art and design while deepening your faith at Indiana Wesleyan University. Like Professor Keith Lowe, you can learn from experienced mentors who will help you grow both as an artist and as a follower of Christ. Build your creative skills and pursue your calling with purpose.
