J Draper Glass LLC, Peoria

Since she was a college student, Jeremie Draper has been shaping molten glass globules into works of art that she describes as still pieces that are "fluid and somehow moving." She even won the prestigious Rickert-Ziebold art award at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale after she spent 16 months creating women's garments made of glass. Upon graduation, she moved to the Pacific Northwest to work with artists in the prominent glass-blowing scene there, and when she came back to Illinois, she opened her studio, J Draper Glass.

Now Jeremie and fellow artists Misty Long and Brandie Centi teach others how to transform glass blobs into paperweights, ornaments, and pumpkins during classes. They also lead demonstrations, pulling the blobs from furnaces that reach 2,150 degrees F and then shaping them into art.