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The Hill of James Magee, also referred to as Jim Magee's Hill, James Magee's Hill, The Magee Hill, or simply The Hill, is an art installation located in Chihuahuan Desert, one hour and twenty minutes outside of El Paso, Texas. [1]
James Magee (born 1945) drew on his experience performing his poetry in the piers at the end of Christopher Street in New York City, and the overall gay scene in the 1970s, when conceiving The Hill, [2] and the pieces contained therein, as well as their titles, began to take shape during this period. [3] [4]
He moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1981, [5] and in 1982 he began acquiring 2000 acres of land in the desert outside of El Paso where he would begin construction of a complex of buildings referred to later as The Hill.
Magee is also a poet; his poetry often serves as titles to specific works of sculpture, including artwork at The Hill. [6]
The Hill, located in the Chihuahuan Desert, is a “relatively short drive” from El Paso, Texas. [5] The complex “sits in a gently rolling landscape with mesmerizing views of snow-capped mountains and limitless West Texas skies”, on a rising above the rocky landscape of the desert. [1]
To get to The Hill, one must drive through the desert, “harsh, gently hilly, unremitting bright in the day, black at night, silent but for the wind and the occasional car or truck or perhaps the shriek of a mouse caught by a hawk”, as Richard Bretell put it. [5]
It is almost impossible to find the site unless guided by Mr. Magee. [6]
The complex of stone buildings consists of four identical structures with flat roofs, each building measuring forty feet long, twenty feet wide, and seventeen feet tall. [1] [3] All buildings are precisely aligned with the cardinal points, forming a compass, [5] and contains two “17-foot-tall, hand-made, rust-steel doors, which open with a screech and clang”. [7]
The east and west buildings face each other, as do the north and south buildings, all of which sit upon raised stoned walkways and pedestals that form a cross, measuring 187 feet from door to door. The construction site, in its entirety, encompasses 52,000 square feet. [1] The buildings were made using rough-cut local shale rock ranging in color from yellow to peach. [3]
According to James Magee, construction of The Hill began with “no architect, no blueprints, the entire construction was laid out with me pacing and using a string and a transom”. [6] It took approximately 250 eight-ton truckloads of stone to create The Hill, [3] and the whole project was built by hand by the artist and a few aides that come and go. [4]
Each of the four buildings of The Hill contain tryptic produced by the artist as well. As Bob Ostertag writes, “the art [within the buildings] defies description. Giant works of many tons each. Steel and iron triptychs on huge ball bearings. Studies in rust and decay and debris. Acid and honey. Beeswax and burnt rubber, Paprika and cold-rolled steel. Barbed wire and pig bone.” [6]
There is no electricity in the art installation, [4] so all light in the buildings is natural light coming in through skylights. [3] According to Brettell, “light defines the interiors each day, regardless of visitors. The works, in other words, are lit not for the viewers but part of a natural cycle; when we enter each building, we know that its interior is beautifully illuminated whether or not we are there." [5]
The Hill has been recognized as one of the most important contemporary works of art in America by various art historians and critics. Richard Brettell argues that “art historians who know it [The Hill] well are a varied and fascinating group, and included (to name only five) the late Walter Hopps, Ruth Fine, Edward Lucie-Smith, Kerry Brougher, and Jonathan Katz. Each of them felt that they had been on a kind of pilgrimage — and, like all faithful pilgrims, each has returned.” [5]
In fact, Walter Hopps praised The Hill of James Magee as a “…magnificent achievement comparable in quality to Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Heizer’s Complex I and Complex II, Turrell’s Roden Crater and De Maria’s Lighting Field.” [1]
Willard Spiegelman from the Wall Street Journal calls The Hill a “masterwork… impressive, indeed extraordinary… a map of the imagination," [4] and Pamela Petro writes “… an extremely American work… reducing articulate art historians to murmuring wonder… a work capable of making adults weep and begetting terror… whose meaning is too abstract to grasp — a sacred space that extends particularly straight to the imagination.” [3]
In 2016, the Smithsonian Archive of American Art acquired all archives focusing on The Hill and his artistic career. The collection includes “correspondence, photographs, writings, printed material, drawings, a CD of Magee's "titles" or poems, and audio visual material including audio cassettes and a reel-to-reel audio recording”. [8]
El Paso is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States. The 2020 population of the city from the U.S. Census Bureau was 678,815, making it the 22nd-most populous city in the U.S., the most populous city in West Texas, and the sixth-most populous city in Texas. Its metropolitan statistical area covers all of El Paso and Hudspeth counties in Texas, and had a population of 868,859 in 2020.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park is an American national park in the Guadalupe Mountains, east of El Paso, Texas. The mountain range includes Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in Texas at 8,751 feet (2,667 m), and El Capitan used as a landmark by travelers on the route later followed by the Butterfield Overland Mail stagecoach line. The ruins of a stagecoach station stand near the Pine Springs visitor center. The restored Frijole Ranch contains a small museum of local history and is the trailhead for Smith Spring. The park covers 86,367 acres in the same mountain range as Carlsbad Caverns National Park, about 25 miles (40 km) to the north in New Mexico. The Guadalupe Peak Trail winds through pinyon pine and Douglas-fir forests as it ascends over 3,000 feet (910 m) to the summit of Guadalupe Peak, with views of El Capitan and the Chihuahuan Desert.
Hueco Tanks is an area of low mountains and historic site in El Paso County, Texas, in the United States. It is located in a high-altitude desert basin between the Franklin Mountains to the west and the Hueco Mountains to the east. Hueco is a Spanish word meaning hollows and refers to the many water-holding depressions in the boulders and rock faces throughout the region. Due to the unique concentration of historic artifacts, plants and wildlife, the site is under protection of Texas law; it is a crime to remove, alter, or destroy them.
Opened in 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is a museum in Dallas, Texas, that houses the Patsy and Raymond Nasher collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. It is located on a 2.4-acre (9,700 m2) site adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art in the Dallas Arts District.
Sotol is a distilled spirit from the Chihuahuan desert sourced from the plants of the genus Dasylirion, most commonly: Dasylirion wheeleri, Dasylirion durangense,Dasylirion cedrosanum, and Dasylirion leiophyllum, less commonly with Dasylirion texanum and Dasylirion lucidum, plants that grow in the Chihuahuan desert of northern Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, and west and central Texas. Sotol liquor is known as the state spirit of Chihuahua; however, the drink is also consumed in Durango and Coahuila. Sotol has its own appellation of origin since 2002, and may be produced only in Chihuahua, Coahuila and Durango. There are dozens of commercial examples available. Production of sotol spirits exists outside the Sotol Denomination of Origin in several regions such as Sonora where it is known as Palmilla, Oaxaca (Cucharillo), and the Texas Hill Country. With Sotol on the rise in terms of its popularity, more brands are beginning to come onto the scene.
Franklin Mountains State Park is a state park in El Paso, Texas, United States. The park is named after the Franklin Mountains, a mountainous range that extends 23 mi (37 km) from El Paso to New Mexico. Its headquarters are located at an elevation of 5,426 feet (1,654 m) with the highest peak, North Franklin Mountain, reaching 7,192 feet (2,192 m). Covering 24,247.56 acres (9,813 ha), it is one of the largest urban parks in the U.S. lying completely within city limits. The park is open year-round for recreational activities such as hiking, mountain biking, picnicking, and scenic driving.
The Franklin Mountains of Texas are a small range 23 miles (37 km) long, 3 miles (5 km) wide that extend from El Paso, Texas, north into New Mexico. The Franklins were formed due to crustal extension related to the Cenozoic Rio Grande rift. Although the present topography of the range and adjoining basins is controlled by extension during rifting in the last 10 million years, faults within the range also record deformation during the Laramide orogeny, between 85 and 45 million years ago.
The Trans-Pecos, as originally defined in 1887 by the Texas geologist Robert T. Hill, is the distinct portion of Texas that lies west of the Pecos River. The term is considered synonymous with Far West Texas, a subdivision of West Texas. The Trans-Pecos is part of the Chihuahuan Desert, the largest desert in North America. It is the most mountainous and arid portion of the state, and most of its vast area is sparsely populated. Among the nine counties in the region are the five largest counties by area in Texas and eight of the eleven largest in the state. The area is known for the natural environment of the Big Bend and the gorge of the Rio Grande, part of which has been designated a National Wild and Scenic Rivers System. With the notable exceptions of Big Bend Ranch State Park, Big Bend National Park and the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, the vast majority of the Trans-Pecos region consists of privately owned ranchland. However, most of the region's population reside in the El Paso metropolitan area. Besides El Paso and its metropolitan area, the major cities are Pecos (12,916), Fort Stockton (8,466), and Alpine (6,035). All other settlements have under 5,000 people.
The geography of Texas is diverse and large. Occupying about 7% of the total water and land area of the U.S., it is the second largest state after Alaska, and is the southernmost part of the Great Plains, which end in the south against the folded Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico. Texas is in the South Central United States of America, and is considered to form part of the U.S. South and also part of the U.S. Southwest.
The El Paso Zoo is a zoo located in El Paso, Texas. The 35-acre (14 ha) facility houses over 220 species, including the critically endangered painted dog and Sumatran orangutan.
Museum Tower is a 42-story, 173.43 m (569.0 ft) skyscraper in the arts district of Dallas, Texas. Completed in January 2013, the building is the tallest new structure to be built in the city in recent years, and is now the second-tallest all-residential building in Dallas, behind Gables Republic Tower.
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Audley Dean Nicols was an American artist, illustrator and muralist. Born and raised in Sewickley, Pennsylvania; he studied in New York and Europe, and worked as an illustrator for various national magazines in the United States. He moved to El Paso, Texas in the early 1920s, where he painted desert landscapes of the American Southwest. Nicols achieved national recognition during his lifetime; his style and choice of subjects gathering followers who became known as the "Purple Mountain Painters".
James Magee is an American artist from Fremont, Michigan. As of 2021, he was based in El Paso, Texas, where he has developed most of his artistic career. His main artistic focus has been The Hill of James Magee, an art installation located in the Chihuahuan Desert, one hour and twenty minutes outside of El Paso.
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