SHEETS—Father & Son—Art for PLEASURE & BUSINESS

Millard and Tony Sheets shared careers in art that combined commissioned commercial work along with art done for their own pleasure. In this exhibit you will see the diversity of their talents as well as their clients.  Here are a few examples:

Millard Sheets’ commissioned works include 

• Designing artwork in and on the bank buildings he designed depicting the history of its specific location • Notre Dame – which was nicknamed “Touch Down Jesus” because of its view from the football stadium • Hilton “Rainbow” Tower in Hawaii.

Tony Sheets’ commissioned works include • Los Angeles World Trade Center – depicting the history of world trade, caveman to Year 2000 • Parking structures at the Los Angeles Times and State Buildings showing their history • 4 or 5 “percent for art” commissions in Santa Fe Springs • A bronze sculpture in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles celebrating the client’s family’s coming to America by ship.

Happily for them both, the business side of their art often changed to pleasure. It gave them the opportunity to travel to 30 plus countries which started Millard’s love of collecting ancient artifacts; his long-time love of horses (pleasure) led to owning race horses (business) and became familiar topic in many of his paintings. Workshops for both Millard and Tony (business) led to lifelong friendships and exposure to a variety of artistic subjects. Tony’s first exposure to copper repousse was on a painting workshop with his Dad (business for Millard, pleasure for Tony) in Taxco, Mexico.  He was intrigued with the process and what started as pleasure soon became a source of income.

The business side of art provided them with the means to pursue their art for pleasure. As time went on, their pleasurable art became their main source of income.

Biography:

Millard Sheets (1907-1989) grew up in the Pomona Valley and was recognized for his artistic abilities while still a teenager.  In his 20’s, he was gaining national recognition as a prominent American artist  exhibiting works at cities throughout the United States.  Locally, he was recognized as the leading figure and driving force behind the California Style watercolor movement.  He was invited to start the art studies program at Scripps College in Claremont and drew many artists to Scripps to teach and as students. Beginning in 1952, he worked directly for Howard Ahmanson, Sr. designing buildings that would include mosaics and other art for dozens of branch offices of Home Savings of American throughout California.  

John Anthony “Tony” Sheets  was born into the Claremont artist’s community of Southern California in 1942. His father, Millard Sheets, was a renowned artist and teacher and, at the time, was the head of the art department at Scripps College. Millard was also an architectural designer and designed their home which he built the year Tony was born. It was in a small artist’s colony in the foothills just north of Claremont. Tony grew up with horses which his Father trained and he and his two brothers rode the hills surrounding their home as kids.

Tony was introduced to the world of art at a very young age. Besides the wonderful artistic talent of both his parents, his neighborhood was filled with professional artists working in every medium imaginable. By the time Tony was 10 years old he had a standing invitation from most of those artists to visit their studios to talk and learn. In return, he learned the necessity of cleaning up after the work was done.

Tony attended two years at Cal Poly, Pomona, studying landscape architecture but after 2 years he became convinced that college was not for him.  That was a major turning point in his artistic life, and his father gave him some very timely advice,” If you really want to be an artist, learn from artists who have made careers in the art world.” Tony did just that, for 13 years.

In the early 1960s he began working as an apprentice for sculptor Albert Stewart who was the head of the sculpture department at Scripps College. Tony would work in Stewart’s studio in the mornings and took classes at Scripps in the afternoon. Millard, being the Art Department Head, at Scripps, being an all-women’s college, overlooked Tony’s presence there. On weekends Tony worked in the studios of other artists to learn other mediums. Jean and Arthur Ames taught him enameling on copper. He watched and listened as Harrison McIntosh, Rupert Dees and William Manker created ceramic artworks which have become the dream of today’s art collectors. He was amazed to see petite Betty Davenport Ford create massive ceramic sculptures, often larger than her, in techniques that she created. While at Scripps during the week, he studied with Paul Soldner, ceramics, Phil Dike, painting, Paul Darrow, print making, and others.

Tony worked for Walt Disney for 2-1/2 yr then joined artist, Tom Van Sant as his apprentice for 7-1/2 yrs. They created artworks in California, Hawaii and Taiwan. They developed new processes for the creation of cast concrete wall sculptures as well as applied sand and cement wall reliefs.

Tony began painting seriously in the mid 70’s when his father insisted that he had been avoiding painting long enough.  In 1984, he taught his first watercolor workshop in Tahiti. Teaching became a larger part of his professional life with workshops taking him to many places around the world 

Tony recently completed nine years of exhibits in the Millard Sheets Fine Arts Building, which was dedicated to Millard in 1994, at the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona. Millard was the Director of Art there for 25 years, 1931 to 1956. Tony and his team created exhibits which were seen by 300,000 visitors through the 12,000 sq ft gallery in 25 days of September annually.  It was a one-of-a-kind experience working in his Father’s footsteps.  

In his 50 years of owning his own business, Tony has worked with varying materials, including pounded copper repousse and other fabricated metals, cast stone, tilt-up and poured concrete, applied sand and cement, GFRC (ground fiber reinforced cement), resins, watercolor and acrylic. And most recently, is doing pyrography (wood burning) small art pieces.