John Liggett Meigs (1916 - 2003)

As an adult, at the time of joining the Navy during World War II, John Liggett Meigs discovered that as a one-year old he had been "kidnapped" by his biological father and his father's mistress, moved from Chicago, and had his name changed to MacMillan.  He never saw his biological mother again.  Over the next several years, he and his family moved many times, finally settling in San Antonio, Texas, where Meigs first developed his interest in art, a career that lasted the remainder of his life, but not before many interruptions for various adventures.

*Following the death of his father, in 1931, Meigs and his foster mother moved to California, where he eventually attended the University of Redlands. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Los Angeles, then a reporter in Hawaii, then architectural work in designing houses, then textile design which led him to become one of the first designers of aloha shirts. He then served in the Navy and following his discharge, lived in Florida for a couple years and established a lounge still in existence as the Trade Winds Tropical Lounge.

Meigs left Florida and went back to Hawaii, and that is when he met artist Peter Hurd from San Patricio, New Mexico.  *After their keeping in touch for a couple years, Hurd invited Meigs to come to New Mexico and assist with a planned mural, though that project got interrupted by circumstances which took Meigs to France for a year. From there, Meigs returned to San Patricio and became a lifelong friend of Hurd's. When Meigs settled in San Patricio, he bought a small, old adobe house, which, over the next forty years, he expanded until it grew to twenty-three rooms; Peter Hurd dubbed it "Fort Meigs." His association with Hurd and his wife Henriette flourished, as did Meig's artistic accomplishments and his social connections.

In his artistic pursuits, Meigs worked in a variety of mediums, to include oil, watercolor, ink and photography.  He had over fifty, one-man exhibitions, to include in Santa Fe, New Mexico; New York City; Lubbock, Texas; Roswell, New Mexico; and Honolulu, Hawaii.  His subject material was primarily either landscape or architectural.  In early 1960, he was commissioned by the Society of California Pioneers to paint a series of watercolors of Victorian homes in San Francisco, those paintings being exhibited at the Society's headquarters in San Francisco in June 1960.  In 1997, the Honolulu Academy of Arts hosted an exhibit of aloha shirts with his designs from the late 1930s and 1940s.  His art, to include his aloha shirts, is in private, corporate and academic collections.

Biography excerpted from AskART

*Additional information provided by Mark S. Fuller of Santa Fe - author of a full-length biography entilted Never a Dull Moment, The Life of John Liggett Meigs (Sunstone Press, Santa Fe). 

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