In 2008, a terminal was to be demolished at Mineta San Jose International Airport on the Nineteen Seventies and was taken with a 25-foot Millard Sheets wall picture.
“Tony examined and found that it was actually a canvas that could be replaced and moved. As a result, this large mural is now in the new terminal, ”wrote Alan Hess, an architectural historian, after Tony's death.
Tony headed the art program on the Los Angeles County Fair, identical to his father had done half a century earlier. And lately he devoted his energies to save lots of mural at home for saving murals at home and other buildings by his father, who was threatened by demolition.
Tony Sheets, the last surviving child of Millard Sheets, died on December 10 on the age of 82 in Oregon after several years of declining health.
Brian Worley wrote on Facebook, who worked with each Tony and Millard: “The Legacy continues, but it has lost the brightest light.”
Millard leaves Was a watercolor and wall painter who was born in Pomona in 1907 and lived and worked in Claremont in 1989. As an admirer of the past few days, I used to be enthusiastic to fulfill his son.
Tony, who was hired in 2007, was the Fair's art director. His father had held the identical post from 1931 to 1956. The constructing of the 1937 positive arts was renamed Millard Sheets Art Center in his honor.
Many of the 300,000 annual visitors may never have entered an art museum. The mission was, as Tony told me in 2010, “to bring art to people”. That was a part of his DNA. His father had an identical view. And his son hugged that.
“I'm not trying to fill your shoes. I try to fill his mind, ”said Tony.
Born in 1942, John Anthony Sheets Grew up in Padua Hills, an artist colony about Claremont, studied or trained for some of the well -known artists of the city and after a few rebellious years made peace with his father and sometimes supported him.
In the 2000s, Millard's commercial art in public or semi-open places was increasingly at risk than home savings for which he had carried out 40 mosaic wall pictures, and these and other buildings were closed, renovated or rebuilt.

Under Tony's direction, the massive “pleasure along the beach” mosaic wall, consisting of thousands of colored glass pieces, were saved in front of a house savings in Santa Monica. It was repaired by Worleywho then supervised his installation in 2024 Outside of the Hilbert Museum of California Art in Orange.
Tony also consulted in regards to the Restoration of his father's double arch tower or31 stories up, on the sides of the Hilton Hawaiian Resort Village in Honolulu, and he Saved an 80-foot tournament from Roses Mural, which found a home at Pasadena City College.
The supporters of his father's art, his late calling, led to saving many examples that would otherwise have been lost.
“I feel this may occasionally be his biggest contribution,” said Catherine Mcintosh, board member of the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art and a friend of the family. “It might be what can be most significant in the long term.”
Adam Arenson met the younger leaves when he demanded Millard's home savings art His book “Banking on Beauty”. Arenson said by e -Mail: “Tony Sheets was primarily a talented and along with his own quirky vision.”
One of the County Fair he organized was on collectors and collecting. The assembly of a man of lunch boxes framed in a lunch box in wall size. The Fair Show 2009 had this cheeky title: “The Making of Art: The first 30,000 years”.
Tony drove his wife Blume for the duration of the fair in a motorhome in a motorhome in 2015 from Oregon. small details.
A characteristic element of his tenure was to work artists in the gallery or on the terrace, blow glass, to tinker jewelry and to weave threads. “People like to see artists at work,” he told me. “It shows you that you may do it.”
Like his father, Tony accepted several monumental commissions.
“Gift of the valley”, “ A painted wall painting of an orange tree was presented in 2017 in the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. The wall painting measures 30 by 83 feet and wraps around two sides of a parking structure in the Orange Grove Avenue and can be appeared from the 10 motorway from the jokes.
His work is also in the city center of Los Angeles. When I recently ended lunch on a weekend at the Grand Central Market, I found that two of these pieces were only home blocks above the Third Street.
“The development of Los Angeles” is situated on the west side of the previous parking structure of the La Times on Broadway. “The development of printing” Is on the east side of the structure in spring. The BAS-Relief wall paintings in concrete were produced from 1988 to 89 and are said to measure 66 x 35 feet.
They are impressive, both in their massive selection and in their compression of centuries into a easy -to -digest timeline of pictures. The printing of the print begins with the old Phoenicians (I think), winds through Gutenberg and ends with – still my heart – a newspapers of newspapers.

I am aware of it, but I have not seen another mural, a frieze that is located in the World Trade Center in the city center. It has another big title “The History of World Trade”.
I don't know who will work to be sure that Millard Sheets' artistic endeavors can be saved within the absence of his son. But with conversations in regards to the renovation of the World Trade Center in apartments, someone could have to work for the rescue of Tony Sheets art.
Originally published:
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