From “Peanuts” Icon to Utz Quality Foods, Senior Artist Displays Work in Taneytown

Westminster native and Carroll Lutheran Village resident Bill Weaver is getting local recognition for his painting of his childhood home at the Taneytown Heritage Museum from April through August. Though he is known in the CLV community for his talent, many do not know his interest in art led him to learning from an iconic cartoonist and creating designs for well-known companies.

Weaver’s art education began as a correspondence course in illustrating and cartooning with Art Instruction, Inc. His cartoon instructor was a young and “not yet famous” Charles Schultz. Weaver would complete his assignments and mail them to Schultz, who would critique and send them back. He said, “Charles had the ‘Peanuts’ comic strip then, but it was called ‘Sparky’s Little Folks.’” While he never met Schultz in person, he learned a lot from the two-year course.

His artistic talent led him to open Weaver Sales Corporation in 1976. Weaver designed logos for well-known companies like DM Bowman, Tevis Company, Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission and others. He also designed the delivery truck layout for Utz Quality Foods. Weaver’s design was the Utz girl reaching into a bag of chips, sitting over the distinctive maroon and brown waves running the length of the delivery trucks.

Glenburn Farm, 2008

After retiring in 2003, Weaver took lessons for ten years from Barbara Snell in Hampstead, MD. She taught him to paint with oil–his medium of preference. He also enjoys pastel, sandpaper and watercolor.

Weaver has been an active member of Carroll County Arts Council and Carroll County Artist Guild, through which he had paintings hang in local restaurants. He is proud to have his oil painting “Glenburn Farm,” his childhood home displayed at the Taneytown Heritage Museum.

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