Name/Title
Aspen Healthcare Pacific Heights - Willie Shipman - Colored SquaresDescription
Growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, Willie Shipman was athletic and loved playing sports – as a center fielder in baseball, a guard in basketball, and football too. In high school he started doing art, including drawing and painting. Willie likes using brushes, and prefers realistic art.
These days, he is a regular in the Art With Elders weekly class, where he experiments with making collages on cloth. He carefully arranges and glues small rectangular and square pieces of felt into a colorful pattern. He prefers darker colors, especially blue and green. “Making art keeps me calm,” he shares.
Born May 27, 1944, as a young man Willie served in the U.S. Air Force in Oakland and San Francisco. Remembering how he liked the northern California climate, he moved to the Bay Area in 1962, living in Oakland for a while and then on Jones Street in SF. He worked as a longshoreman on the docks, and also did masonry work laying brick and concrete.
Easygoing and thoughtful, Willie enjoys reading the newspaper and nonfiction books about history. He plays cards and Bingo, and always shows up for events with live music. He is a music lover who used to sing at church, in school, and in the service. “I like all kinds of music, like jazz. Gospel’s all right. But not rock.”
