Oral history interview with Millard Sheets, 1986 October-1988 July, Transcript
Oral history interview with Millard Sheets, 1986 October-1988 July, Digital Sound Recording (Excerpt)
Originally recorded on 8 sound cassettes. Reformatted in 2010 as 16 digital wav files. Duration is 8 hr., 13 min.
Transcript available on the Archives of American Art website.
An interview with Millard Sheets conducted 1986 October-1988 July, by Paul Karlstrom, for the Archives of American Art.
Sheets speaks of his childhood and early education; attending Chouinard Art Institute and being influenced by instructor F. Tolles Chamberlin; teaching at Scripps College Foundation of Art from 1931 to 1955; the beginnings of the California Watercolor Society; his painting career; his thoughts on Southern California Modernism; the growth and development of California art; artists including Lorser Feitelson and Rico Lebrun; designing forty buildings for Howard Ahmanson from the 1950s through the 1970s; his relationships with art critics; his involvement with architecture and design; and his philosophy as an art teacher. He recalls Theodore Modra and Dalzell Hatfield.
Transcript available on line.
Millard Sheets (1907-1989) was a painter, educator, designer, and mural painter from California.
These interviews are part of the Archives' Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.