James Magee, 1945 — 2024

James Magee, an artist known for his large-scale El Paso-based installation The Hill, died on September 14 at the age of 79.

James Magee

Mr. Magee was born on June 3, 1945, in Fremont, Michigan to Robert and Mary Branstrom Magee. In a 2016 interview with Jason Stieber for the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, Mr. Magee spoke about having access to art early in his life. He said, “My grandfather Branstrom had a house with real art in it. I mean, he had Beaux Arts paintings from the latter part of the 19th Century and he had some statues. So, I was near that even though I was in this little, for the most part, Dutch reform community, I was exposed.”

He attended the nearby Presbyterian Alma College and spent his Junior year in Paris, where he took some life drawing classes at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere. In 1968, he graduated with a degree in History, and minored in French. In 1971, he received a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Immediately following his graduation, Mr. Magee returned to Paris for a time where he worked as an assistant to the sculptor Caroline Lee. He has said that though art was always an important part of his life, he did not see it as a profession. Ultimately Mr. Magee would return to the U.S. and spend nearly a decade in upstate New York. He was an attorney who worked with The Quakers and the United Nations on bills related to conscientious objection to military service. 

It was during his time in New York that, inspired by David Smith’s property in Bolton Landing, Mr. Magee first had the idea for The Hill, though he has said that the name came later. The artist first visited El Paso in 1977, and after spending a few years working on oil rigs in Texas, he eventually moved to the city in 1981. The Hill, brought to fruition over four decades, consists of four identical buildings — each 40 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 17 feet high — connected by causeways. The work sits on 2,000 acres of land in Cornudas, a small town 70 miles east of El Paso.

James Magee, “The Hill.” Photograph by Nick Simonite.

In her remembrance published in El Paso Matters, Adair Margo, gallerist, wrote, “The structures — each with one room and two sets of double steel doors — form a cross. Inside each building is a large altarpiece weighing tons, constructed of steel, glass, metal, wax, and detritus. The completion of the fourth building was in progress when Magee died.”

Beyond The Hill, Mr. Magee is also known for creating works as Annabel Livermore and Horace Mayfield. He spoke of Annabel, a painter, first appearing to him in 1976 and Horace arriving in the 1990s, following his HIV diagnosis. He has said, “I’m constantly trying to correct people. I do it to some extent. Oftentimes I just give up when they say, ‘Well, Annabel’s a pseudonym.’ It’s not a pseudonym. No, this is a woman with — this is a friend of mine who’s had 35, 40 years of my life. And we’re trying to do the best we can.”

Annabel Livermore, “Valley of Death”

Jack Massing spoke with Glasstire about an exhibition of Ms. Livermore’s work that The Art Guys facilitated in 1993. He said: “The afternoon of the opening Jim stopped by and said that Annabel was coming over to look around, if we didn’t mind, and quite soon she was there and took us on a tour through all the work theatrically reading the titles of each one. Her voice was high-pitched and mysterious. Each word had a sense of purpose wrapped in a delicate cadence. Her voice wildly modulated in pitch to stress certain phrases, sometimes singing, sometimes diminished to a soft whisper to stress the poetic hook that embodied the imagery locked within the picture in front of us.”

He continued, “Annabel’s titles were as important as the paintings, they belong together, inseparable, tying word and image together forever. Annabel was Jim’s neighbor in El Paso. She is a retired librarian from the Midwest that Jim met a long time ago and they became inseparable friends.”

James Magee and Camilla Carr

Mr. Massing also reflected on Mr. Magee’s presence, stating, “I loved him dearly; we all did. Jim and I had a great relationship as fellow travelers and artists. His random phone calls were a delight… He had a great sense of humor and seemed interested in most everything.”

As well as being an artist, Mr. Magee was known for his poetry, writing, and performance pieces. His book Letters to Goya: Poems, Titles, and Letters to the Dead was published in 2019. 

A celebration of life service will be held at St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Newaygo, Michigan on Saturday, November 16 at 1 p.m. A celebration will also be held at The Hill on Saturday, May 3, 2025. In lieu of flowers please consider a donation to the El Paso Community Foundation, which oversees the preservation of The Hill.