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Millard Sheets

department, which became the beginning of a twenty-year association 
with the school.  He also became the Director of Art at Claremont 
Graduate School in 1938.  
 

Though known primarily for his murals and commissioned water 

colors, Sheets designed several buildings, including houses.  In 1953, 
Sheets founded the Millard Sheets Design Company.  He hired between 
25 and 30 artisans for large projects.  The working staff included 
engineers, registered architects, draftsmen, and artists, and the projects 
that the firm produced included murals, mosaics, stained glass, and 
sculpture for private homes and public commercial businesses.
 

Millard Sheets’ own residence in the art colony of Padua Hills 

translates the static stateliness of his commercial work into the residential 
scale.  Built in 1942, it was the second home he built in the Claremont 
area.  The Sheets Residence was designed and built in a style and with 
materials which were certainly ahead of their time.  Sheets designed 
the house with high ceilings and a flat roof, giving the building a sleek

 

Millard Sheets was a nationally renowned 

American artist and a prominent figure in the 
Claremont community.  Growing up in Pomona, he and 
his wife, Mary Sheets, moved to Claremont in 1929, 
following his completion of art school at Chouinard 
School of Art is Los Angeles.  In 1932, he returned to 
school to study art and humanities at Scripps College.  
After graduating, he was offered to set up a separate 
fine arts program and become the chair of the new