James Magee

James Magee (born in 1945) 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. Early life James Magee attended Alma College in Alma, Michigan where he majored in history and minored in French in 1968. In 1971, he obtained a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Mr. Magee spent the immediate two years of his post-college life living in Paris as an assistant to the American sculptor Caroline Lee and her partner, the Serbian sculptor Radivoje Knežević. He then lived in New York for ten years, where he worked diverse jobs such as cab driver, union welder and assistant to Tommy Koh, the Singapore Ambassador to the United Nations. This last job allowed him to travel to Geneva, where he wrote structural analysis for the UN Law of the Sea Conference. During this time in New York, Mr. Magee began performing his poetry in the piers at the end of Christopher Street. This particular experience in the city, and the overall gay scene in the 1970's, were one of the inspirations for The Hill and the pieces contained therein, as well as their poetic titles. He moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1981, and in 1982, he began acquiring 2000 acres of land in the desert outside of the city, where he began construction of a complex of buildings referred to later as The Hill.