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"First Look Saturday"
September 7th from 10:30-5:30pm
Preview and Purchase Highlights from Four New Collections
Light Refreshments and Visits from Some of the Artist's Families Throughout the Day
Helen Taylor Sheats
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Helen Taylor Sheats (1910-1999)
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In 1932, Helen married Vern Taylor, an agronomist and fellow student at the University of Wisconsin, and moved back to Madison. It was there that she designed and built her first house. Made of steel, innovative at the time, it was based on 4-foot modules, which she had seen exhibited at a World’s Fair. It still stands in Shorewood Hills, and is known as the Taylor House. Helen and Vern had two children, Marion, born in 1937, and Tuck, born in 1938. Unfortunately, Vern had heart complications due to childhood rheumatic fever, and his health failed shortly after Tuck’s birth. He died in 1940.
After Vern’s untimely death, Helen went back to the University of Wisconsin for a teaching credential. She taught art in grammar schools and jewelry in adult education classes. While getting her teaching credential, she met Paul Henry Sheats whom she married in 1942. They had two children, Peter, born in 1944 and Michael, born in 1945. Paul’s son from a previous marriage, Paul Douglas, joined the family in the summers.
Helen dedicated the next period of her life to raising her children and to helping Paul build his career. The family moved to New York City where Paul was the Education Director of Town Hall of the Air, and later to Los Angeles when he joined the faculty at UCLA. During this time, Helen also resumed her interest in modern architecture. She worked with John Lautner, a Frank Lloyd Wright protégé, to design four residences and build two. One was an innovative apartment building (there are no common walls, for example), near the UCLA campus (1950), and the other a spectacular home in the hillside section of Beverly Hills (1963). Both buildings have received much attention for their unusual futuristic designs and features, as well as their importance as milestones in the career of John Lautner, who has been recognized as a major 20th century American architect.
At this time Helen developed a close and enduring bond with Alfredo Valentino and his family that continued to the end of her life. Alfredo was one of Helen’s most frequent subjects and his influence can also be seen in the many still life set ups he composed for her using found objects and personal treasures. Helen’s heroes were Matisse, Van Gogh and Frank Lloyd Wright. Her style can be characterized as neo-Fauvist, and her bold use of color is a tribute to those who went before. Her work is filled with an intense and bright vision of the world.
In 1999, at her home in Los Angeles, Helen passed away surrounded by family and friends.
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