After receiving a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, Julie Farstad relocated to Chicago and, in short order, was featured in New American Paintings, Book XLI , a bible of sorts for up-and-coming artists. True, she is a provocative visual artist, painting scenes of crawling infants and eerie babies. Her work exudes a minimalism, where the infants are often presented on plain colored backgrounds, lending a starkness to the pieces. But most astounding is her technique: she uses glazing, which applies additional layers to the paint. Her work has been displayed at the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery. She is also a part-time faculty member at Northeastern Illinois University, and gives lectures around the city. In addition to creating visual art, Julie is the co-publisher and editor – as well as a writer – of Mouth to Mouth magazine, which aims to open up the Chicago art scene to more people, and to invigorate discourse surrounding art and culture by publishing only interviews without images.

More info: http://www.zollaliebermangallery.com/artists_pics/juliefarstad.html

Anyone working in Chicago arts education understands both the lack of funding and the inversely proportionate need for art in classrooms. To tackle both issues is a demanding endeavor, but one 24-year-old Taryn Fisher feels is crucial, even obligatory, to professionals working in the arts. For the past three years, Fisher has worked as studio coordinator and teacher at Chicago 's Lookingglass Theater Company, where she manages off-sight classes and works with 37 different schools in arts-integration, including schools with students with autism. A self-stated “professional camp counselor,” she has also worked as a tutor in a maximum-security youth prison. Arts education, she says, “teaches kids self-confidence and growth,” both of which are critical components of theater and education. Fisher's attention to both is vital to her character and deeply apparent as she discusses her career. With poignant gestures and a subtle, qualifying vocal tone, you are convinced of one thing – this woman cares about what she does. As a Chicago educator, she is as indispensable as the art she teaches.

Asking for money from total strangers is like trying to dress yourself with one arm. You think it's not going to be that hard, but by the time you're done, it seems like there is little energy left for anything else. This is the life of a fundraiser. Kelly Glenn, the finance director for Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, spends most of her time raising money for his campaigns. “I have to convince CEOs that I am just as important as they are to get them to listen,” Glenn says. Kelly started her career in fundraising for then-Congressman Blagojevich and, after his election, she traveled to Washington , D.C. , to continue her political career. When Blagojevich decided to run for the governor's seat, she came back to Chicago to run the campaign fundraising. “I would always be the youngest person in the room by ten or 15 years,” she says. “My age was definitely something to overcome.” Glenn has indeed overcome her age as she continues to raise money for the governor's campaign and also assists in the fundraising for the community and other Democratic nominees at both the state and federal level.

More info: http://www.illinois.gov/default.cfm

In sixth grade, about the same time The Cure released Disintegration and De La Soul released Three Feet High and Rising, Michael Guarrine decided that excitable and sometimes-danceable rock and roll was for him. Music has been part of his entire life: his mother played piano and his father was a church singer. One of his first memories, he says, is singing the National Anthem at the age of three for his parents' friends, a different cry from his sixth-grade influences and current three-year role as lead singer of the Chicago-based band Watchers. “The band,” 27 year-old Guarrine states, “wants to present challenging to play and entertaining music.” The audience seems pretty damn entertained at Watchers shows as Guarrine works them into an unbound frenzy by leaping into walls, people and the stage, inviting their often unused and compelling energy into the open. Simply, Watchers make people move, an appreciated alternative to the sometimes stand-offish, stand-still indie-rock Chicago scene.

More info: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/w/watchers/to-the-rooftops.shtml

If you had started your own successful company by yourself by the age of 25, do you think you'd stop what you were doing and do it all over again? Dawn Hancock is a self-taught print and Web designer who had been working in Chicago since 1999, when she started SomeOddPilot, a small design firm. “My father passed away and it made me re-evaluate some of my priorities,” Hancock says. Standing up for various causes has been both a part of her personal life and her work. Hancock has focused her new design company, firebelly designs, toward “working with socially responsible companies and organizations.” Hancock began volunteering in 1999 with the Lesbian Community Cancer Project and designed the site www.lccp.org. In the fall of 2000, she stepped up to be the organization's creative director and worked on the BitchToQuit anti-tobacco campaign. “[That] was the moment I realized firebelly could really affect people,” she says. “It has been the most rewarding project.” Working with firebelly, Hancock is in a different place than she was five years ago with SomeOddPilot, and she attributes it to passion. “You have to be passionate about what you do, whatever it is,” she says.

More info: www.firebellydesign.com