Sheets, Millard (24 June 1907–31 Mar. 1989), watercolorist, architectural designer, and impresario of art and architecture commissions in many traditional media, was born Millard Owen Sheets in Pomona, California, the only child of John Gosper Sheets, a butter maker turned salesman, and Marilla Mae Owen. Millard’s mother died of complications following his birth, and Sheets was raised by his maternal grandparents on a horse ranch in the rural, agricultural community. As a boy, Sheets was encouraged to draw by his aunts, and a neighbor volunteered to be Sheets’s first art instructor when he was only seven. At twelve, he won a prize in an art competition at the Los Angeles County Fair. Sheets’s early aptitude for painting brought him from one mentor to another, including the Los Angeles County Fair art commissioner Theodore B. Modra and California regionalist painters F. Tolles Chamberlin and Clarence Hinkle....
