Millard Owen Sheets

Millard Owen Sheets was born in 1907 in Pomona, California, and attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he studied with F. Tolles Chamberlin and Clarence Hinkle. Prior to graduating, Sheets was hired by the Chouinard Art Institute to teach watercolor painting while continuing his studies. During the Great Depression, Sheets helped hire artists for the Public Works of Art Project, the first New Deal art program. During World War II, he was an artist-correspondent for Life magazine and the United States Army Air Forces in Burma and India. His major commissions include works for the Detroit Public Library; the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; the dome of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.; and the Notre Dame University Library in South Bend, Indiana.