In Memory

Tony Sheets - Class Of 1961

Tony Sheets

 
Celebration of Life
June 21, 2025 ~ 12:00 - 4:00 pm
Gualala Arts Center
46501 Old Stage Rd, Gualala, CA 95445
 
July 6, 1942 ~ December 10, 2024

"Anthony “Tony” Sheets left this world peacefully and surrounded by so much love.of family and friends. In the end, he asked to go. He was ready. He filled this world with so much love and happiness and beauty. He is truly at peace"

           Summer Sheets, daughter

1942-2024

Remembering Tony Sheets: Artist, Exhibition Director, and Steward of his Father’s Public Works

The Claremont community mourns the passing of Tony Sheets, the youngest son of Millard Sheets, who died on December 10. Tony was a beloved friend, artist, exhibition director, and a champion of his father's legacy. He played a significant role in preserving many of Millard’s murals and sculptures.

Born in 1942, Tony grew up in Padua Hills, where he spent his formative years learning from neighboring artists and apprenticing under Albert Stewart. He attended Cal Poly for two years, took classes in the Scripps Art Department, and worked with Tom Van Sant on major art commissions. Tony began painting seriously in the 1970s and taught workshops around the world. Over his lifetime, he explored various mediums, including pyrography and copper repoussé, and authored a book titled “Epiphany in a Dream.”
From 2007 to 2015, Tony served as the Exhibit Director of the Millard Sheets Center for the Arts at Fairplex, continuing his father’s dream of bringing fine art to over 300,000 visitors at the LA County Fair each year.

As many of Millard’s Home Savings and other buildings were sold, Tony urged new owners to preserve the murals and sculptures. He facilitated the restoration of the Hilton Hawaiian Rainbow Tower, the relocation of the San Jose Airport mural, and found a home for the Tournament of Roses panels at Pasadena City College.
With his encouragement, the massive “Pleasures Along the Beach” mosaic mural was restored by Brian Worley and relocated to the Hilbert Museum in Orange. Worley remarked, “Tony was a talented artist, friend, and a leader in the preservation efforts for his father’s legacy. The Sheets legacy will continue, but it has lost its brightest light. His was a life well-lived.”

Tony maintained close ties with many Claremont friends and the families of artists. Woody Dike noted, “Tony was a powerhouse of love, devotion, and creativity.”

In recent years, Tony lived with his wife, Flower, near the home of their daughter, Summer, in Murphy, Oregon. He is also survived by his children Trent, Heidi, and Tim; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested donations in his name to either the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art or the Gualala Arts Center.
Donate in Memory of Tony Sheets

Please read his biorgraphy here: Tony Sheets Biography – California Watercolor

Remembering Tony Sheets, who saved art by his father, Millard Sheets

By David Allen | dallen@scng.com | Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

PUBLISHED: January 30, 2025 at 12:51 PM PST

Tony Sheets stands before a mural about the first Tournament of Roses Parade by his father, Millard Sheets. The mural had found a new home at Pasadena City College in 2014 after decades at a Home Savings branch. Tony Sheets, who restored and rescued many of his father’s artworks, died Dec. 10, 2024 at age 82. (File photo by Walt Mancini/Pasadena Star-News)

Tony Sheets went his own way as an artist, rarely working directly with his famous father. But in later years, Millard Sheets’ legacy became his son’s.

Tony led the art program at the Los Angeles County Fair, just as his father had done a half-century earlier. And he devoted his energies in recent years toward rescuing murals at Home Savings and other buildings by his father that were threatened by demolition.

The last surviving child of Millard Sheets, Tony Sheets died Dec. 10 at age 82 in Oregon after several years of declining health.

On Facebook, Brian Worley, who worked with both Tony and Millard, wrote: “The Sheets legacy will continue but it has lost the brightest light.”

Millard Sheets was a watercolorist and muralist who was born in Pomona in 1907 and lived and worked in Claremont before his 1989 death. As a latter-day admirer, I was thrilled to meet his son.

Tony, hired in 2007, was the fair’s director of art. His father had held the same post from 1931 to 1956. The 1937 Fine Arts Building had been renamed the Millard Sheets Art Center in his honor.

Many of the 300,000 annual visitors might never otherwise set foot in an art museum. The mission, as Tony told me in 2010, was “to bring art to the people.” That was part of his DNA. His father had held a similar view. And his son embraced that.

“I don’t try to fill his shoes. I try to fill his spirit,” Tony said.

Born in 1942, John Anthony Sheets was raised in Padua Hills, an artists’ colony above Claremont, studied with or apprenticed for some of the city’s well-known artists and, after some rebellious years, made peace with his father and assisted him at times.

By the 2000s, Millard’s commercial art in public or semi-public places was increasingly in jeopardy as Home Savings, for which he had done 40 mosaic murals, became Chase Bank, and those and other buildings were shuttered, renovated or repurposed.

Tony Sheets touches up a mural by his father, Millard, at Mineta International Airport in San Jose in 2011. The canvas mural, which had been glued to the wall in Terminal C, was successfully removed and installed in the new international terminal. (File photo by Patrick Tehan, Mercury News/BANG)

In 2008, a 1970s terminal at San Jose International Airport was set to be demolished, taking a 28-by-35-foot Sheets mural with it.

“Tony investigated and found it was actually on canvas that could be detached and moved. As a result, that great mural is today in the new terminal,” Alan Hess, an architectural historian, wrote after Tony’s death.

Under Tony’s direction, the massive “Pleasures Along the Beach” mosaic mural, made up of thousands of pieces of colored glass, was saved from a Santa Monica Home Savings. It was repaired by Worley, who then oversaw its installation in 2024 outside the Hilbert Museum of California Art in Orange.

Tony also consulted on the restoration of his father’s twin Rainbow Tower mosaics, 31 stories high, on the sides of the Hilton Hawaiian Resort Village in Honolulu, and he rescued an 80-foot Tournament of Roses mural that found a home at Pasadena City College.

Advocating for his father’s art, his late-in-life calling, resulted in saving many examples that otherwise would have been lost.

“I think that’s maybe his biggest contribution,” Catherine McIntosh, board member of the Claremont Lewis Museum of Art and a family friend, told me. “It’s probably the thing that will be most important in the long term.”

Adam Arenson got to know the younger Sheets while researching Millard’s Home Savings art for his book “Banking on Beauty.” By email, Arenson said: “Tony Sheets was first and foremost an artist, talented and with his own sometimes quirky vision.”

One of the county fair shows he organized was on collectors and collecting, with a man’s assemblage of lunch boxes framed inside a wall-sized lunchbox. The 2009 fair show had this tongue-in-cheek title: “The Making of Art: The First 30,000 Years.”

Tony would drive down from Oregon in an RV with his wife, Flower, for the duration of the fair through his last one in 2015. Friendly and low-key, he always appeared glad to see me and would walk me around the exhibit to point out little touches.

A signature element of his tenure was to have artists at work inside the gallery or out on the patio, blowing glass, crafting jewelry, weaving threads. “People love to see artists at work,” he told me. “It makes them see they can do it.”

“The Evolution of Los Angeles” is a 66-by-35-foot narrative mural in concrete by artist Tony Sheets that traces the history of the city. It’s on the exterior of a parking structure on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

Like his father, Tony took on several monumental commissions.

“Gift of the Valley,” a painted mural of an orange tree, was unveiled in 2017 at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. Measuring 30 by 83 feet, the mural wraps around two sides of a parking structure on Orange Grove Avenue and can be glimpsed from the 10 Freeway.

His work is also in downtown Los Angeles. Finishing up lunch on a recent weekend at Grand Central Market, I realized two of those pieces were just blocks away above Third Street.

“The Evolution of Los Angeles” is on the west side of the former L.A. Times parking structure on Broadway. “The Evolution of Printing” is on the structure’s east side on Spring. The bas-relief murals in concrete were produced from 1988-89 and are said to measure 66 by 35 feet.

They’re impressive to take in, both in their massive scale and in their compression of centuries into an easy-to-digest timeline of images. The one about printing begins with (I think) the ancient Phoenicians, winds through Gutenberg and ends with — be still my heart — a newsboy hawking newspapers.

Passersby walk by “The Evolution of Printing,” a concrete mural by Tony Sheets on South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. It’s on the exterior of a parking structure formerly owned by the Los Angeles Times. The multi-scene mural ends with a newsboy hawking a newspaper. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)

I’m aware of but haven’t seen another mural, a frieze, that is in downtown’s World Trade Center. It sports yet another grand title, “The History of World Commerce.”

I don’t know who will advocate for saving Millard Sheets’ artwork in his son’s absence. But with talks about renovating the World Trade Center into apartments, it might be that someone will need to advocate for saving Tony Sheets art too.

David Allen writes Friday, Sunday and Wednesday for newspaper sheets. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X.

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12/10/24 01:32 PM #1    

Erik Seineke (1964)

Condolences for You & Family

I met him when He was in 10th grade at CHS...

I was in 7th grade, My sister Susie was best friends with 

Caroline (Curly) Curtis. This was circa 1959, I believe that

Tony & Curly did marry after Graduation in '61.

Your Father was so accomplished, in His own right, plus the

on-going dedication to His Father (Millard) .

This Site, thanks to the continued efforts of Sharon Esterly, is an important avenue for CHS Alumni. Sadly, so many have not been in touch since 2011 - 2014... Life is too short 😥😥😥


12/11/24 11:25 AM #2    

Sharon Esterley (1961)

Posted on behalf of Tony's daughter Summer Sheets

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Hard to believe all that happened was only yesterday. It feels like I’ve lived a lifetimes worth of emotions in the last few days.

Thank you again to everyone. The outpouring of love and memories and support is a wonderful testament to how many lives have been touched by my dad (Tony). It’s an honor to be a part of everyone’s love and grief. I fully understand that we are not the only one’s here feeling his absence.. From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry for everyone’s loss.

In lieu of flowers, we would love for donations to be made in his name to either the Claremont Museum of Art or the Gualala Arts, if anyone feels so called to. The links will be below.

We also wanted to pass on that at this time, we are thinking there will be a celebration sometime next summer for him. I will update again when we know more.

Until then, celebrate him in your favorite way. Many of us have been blasting some Neil Diamond, dancing, singing and shaking our tamboreens. There may have been some gin and tequila as well… 😉

He was, and still is, a powerful force of love and light that will shine on through all of us.

Love to all….

~Summer

https://clmoa.org/donate/

http://gualalaarts.org/support-gualala-arts/


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