Millard Sheets

MILLARD SHEETS

Biographical Information

Born, raised, and educated in southern California, Sheets (1907-1989) studied at Chouinard Art Institute, where he also began teaching while still a third-year student. He was a member of the executive committee that ran the local PWAP, the first New Deal art project. He also was one of 15 artists chosen nationally to paint murals in the Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C. During World War II he traveled to India and Burma as a war artist for Life magazine. From the late 1930s until 1955 he headed the art departments at Scripps College and Claremont Graduate School. In 1953 he became director of Otis Art Institute (now Otis/Parsons), and while in that position created a new official seal for the County of Los Angeles. For more than 27 years, beginning in 1952, Sheets designed the buildings and accompanying artistic decoration (often in collaboration with Susan Hertel and Denis O'Connor), for offices of Home Savings of America throughout California. Outside of California his major commissions included murals for the Detroit Public Library, the Mayo Clinic, the dome of the National Shrine in Washington, D.C., the Notre Dame University Library, and the Hilton Hotel in Honolulu.

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