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As much as I love the big names, it excites me more to share the undiscovered everyday talented, hardworking, passionate, driven.. Artists, dreamers, performers.. That diversify & accentuate the culture & personality of this great city that I love. Some find me directly, some I bump into randomly as I explore the cultural scene myself, but I have to say, my favorite way to discover new talented people, is when you all share names of people you like with me!

An extreme example of probably all of the above is when a 22yr old girl named amanda rushed the stage where jeremy piven & I were hosting a fundraiser for children’s theatre scholarships last year at rockit.  She introduced herself, told us about her passion, and presented the above drawing she did with markers as a gift for jeremy’s philanthropic efforts, that he could auction off to raise more money if wanted.  Someone then mentioned her to me randomly as someone I should feature here…. so meet amanda!

amanda’s not just a talented artist (click here to see more drawings of people like beiber, tarantino, toews, efron ..), she’s a generous person who’s been giving back to the community through her art, and I really dig that! she works with walk-on farms in barrington, where they teach kids with autism and other disabilities how to ride horses she donates movie pre-screening tickets to them (she donated 50 tickets for the children to see “secretariat” and “tangled“) and she’s donated to the anti-cruelty society, the children’s memorial hospital.. To name a few.

Her backstory is pretty interesting too. amanda started off tagging trains, bridges, and walls at age 10, but after serving hours and hours of community service and entering high school, she was introduced to a whole new world of art. she took different sorts of art classes in school(including 4 ap classes!). however in her senior year of high school, she went to a treatment center for substance abuse/addiction. she became completely clean when she was 18 years old and has been clean ever since.

i love her attitude towards her art and why she does it: to stay clean and to stay involved and give back what was so freely given to her.so i wanna try to help amanda out. check out her artwork above or more at www.hitrecord.org/users/ArrivederciArts to all my friends and followers out there, if you wanna buy one of her art pieces, you can contact her via twitter http://www.twitter.com/amandaelizaldi or email her at amandaelizaldi@yahoo.com. let’s support this amazing chicagoan! And don’t forget, send me more names of people you like too!!!!!!!!!

5 Responses

  1. Kirsten

    Thanks for posting this, Billy, and for always recognizing emerging talent in the Chicago cultural scene. You’ve done wonders for one of my sketch comedy troupes, Urban Indigenous, and I can’t wait until my other sketch comedy troupe, Taco-Flavored Eggrolls, starts its next revue in April so I can tell you all about that!

    Reply
  2. Swank

    Billy you are a true supporter of local talent.
    Easy to talk too, and always up for giving us local guys a shot…Thank you brother-S

    Reply
  4. Billy Mcintyre

    YAYYY! Thanks billy for doing this for my girl and our company Arrivederci Productions!

    Reply
  5. melanie ferguson

    bravo billy you are an inspiration . I came to this city five years ago from a cultural wasteland called Ohio. In this time, I have worked with a lot of talented people and met a lot of great people and can consider them my friends. Thanks for extending your hand in friendship and encouraging me to make my dreams come true. I consider Rockit as home.

    Reply

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