Nurturing Her Fellow Artists
Cheryl L. Weisz, author, The Artist Handbook

by Susan G. Luster

Artists don’t have to struggle alone. One of their own has created The Artist Network to support them and help them help themselves. Cheryl L. Weisz, an artist with talents in many areas, is currently a full-time potter and founder of The Artist Network. The most recent manifestation of this is her eight week class at the Visual Art Exchange in Raleigh.

Cheryl with her dog Abby

Cheryl created The Artist Handbook to Health, Wealth, Happiness, Loving, Caring, Sharing, Riches and Abundance in 1993. It supports both her work with The Artist Network and her structured classes. Fourteen artists recently completed her class. The purpose of the class was for each participant “to create in reality something he or she has always wanted to have, be or do with the individual’s art.” Examples might be to have a first time show, starting a business or getting the lead part in a play. The class follows The Artist Handbook, a step-by-step workbook that Cheryl has developed over many years of nurturing her fellow artists. The exercises lead them to manifest their goals and have fun while doing so. They each choose a project to achieve—something they always wanted to do but were afraid to start, didn’t know how or gave up because it seemed too big. The groups are a mix of professionals and novices. They often look for new energy, a new style or just to get the thrill back into their works.

The class starts with a questionnaire that asks participants to delve into their innermost desires and outline steps that will help them attain their next-step goal. Cheryl says the keys to success are making the steps do-able and making them fun. The program maps out the steps to success in a way that supports the artists along the way. They define their own criteria, determine their projects, and get excited. They make weekly reports to one another, providing reinforcement and incentive to keep moving. Cheryl has found these techniques apply to any kind of project, and they are useful for planning and achieving future goals.

Networking is a major element of the program. The artists provide a wealth of information to each other, providing resources from books on writing a business plan to different ways of approaching art and life.

The class of artists who just completed her course thoughtfully described their successes in this collective statement, “Everyone who completed the entire eight week program reached their desired goals. We had 100% success. Many goals were nuts and bolts of doing the business end of art: portfolios, artist statements, business plans, biographies, creating a body of work for shows. Some were creating a workable studio space, increasing income, learning more about their ‘style’ of art and how to market it. Moving through the doubts of being an artist is so much easier when in the company of fellow artists like this."

These artists are truly a tribute to Cheryl’s purpose in life—to help people achieve whatever they want to achieve. What she is doing is not counseling, but nurturing. She began this nurturing work when she graduated from Franklin Pearce College with a BA in Creative and Performing Arts. She describes her Masters in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica as, “the turnkey event for writing The Artist Handbook, which documents the journey, principles and practices which allow me to create the artist lifestyle in which I thrive today.”

The Artist Network has members all around the US, which Cheryl set up over the years as she moved from New Hampshire to Florida to Pennsylvania to North Carolina. She keeps in touch with artists by email, including an artist in Paris whose success has increased dramatically since working with Cheryl. The Network started with informal meetings in her home, “chewing the fat” about art and life. It is a support group in the most positive sense, a nurturing, fun, fluid flow of artists looking to take that next big step.

Cheryl has pursued art in many forms: as a pen and ink illustrator, advertising artist, theatre set designer, coffeehouse performer, art instructor, and currently as a full-time potter. She is active with the Triangle Potters Guild, an educational nonprofit organization for potters of all abilities and interests that promotes the knowledge of and interest in clay art. She can be reached through the City of Raleigh’s Pullen Arts Center at 919-831-6126.