DESERT BOY ON A STICK by Bob Ostertag:

El Paso, Texas is a border town if there ever was one. Together with Juarez, Mexico, it is one big, poor, dusty city of two and a half million cut down the middle by the Rio Grande. The drive out of El Paso to the hill takes you through an arid high desert landscape. Vistas stretch for hundreds of thousands of acres as far as the eye can see. Overhead the sky extends even farther. Look ahead and you can see 100 miles into New Mexico. Look behind and you can see 100 miles into old Mexico.  

An hour or so of driving gets you to the town of Cornudas, population three (or four) (sometimes five). A truck stop really, with an old covered wagon, a gift shop with wooden Indians and portraits of Elvis on velvet, Lynden LaRouche political hand-outs, Texas-sized hamburgers, and a Texas flag. When they first put up the flag they flew a Puerto Rican one by mistake. Some trucker must have noticed the discrepancy, and now Cornudas salutes an American state instead of an American colony.

The storms that often blow through here are biblical in scale. "I love the taste of this sand in my mouth," Jim Magee muses. "It's very Old Testament. From this very spot, if we were to continue driving due east, we would end up in Jerusalem. How much gas do you have?" 

First you go to El Paso, which is nowhere by art world geographical reckoning. From there you head a hundred miles or so to Cornudas, which is nowhere by most anybody's reckoning. Turn off the road somewhere near Cornudas and head out into the desert on some faint tire tracks in the dirt, and you arrive at the hill. 

Just what the hill is is difficult to pin down, even for Jim — and he made it. 

"The hill is my whole life. I don't know what to say beyond that. I guess everything I do leads me back to this hill. It's everything for me. I dream about it. I dream about it a lot. I don't know how to go into that. That dream is where the hill is, not where we are going. It's a fingerprint. We all leave fingerprints on the earth, I suppose. Someone once called it a collect call to the future."  

The road that took Jim to the hill stretches through the entirety of his 56 years. It began with his conservative Protestant mid-western upbringing, continued through law school, traveling in Africa, a Christian monastery in France, work for the United Nations in New York City, a junk yard on Staten Island where he made his home and first began to work with large-scale junk art, and his next home and studio in a chicken coop and ladies underwear factory in upstate New York.

But more than anything, the hill took shape in the small hours of the mornings in the abandoned shipping piers on the West Side of lower Manhattan, which in the brief period between Stonewall and the AIDS epidemic became the anonymous stage for one of the most incredible sexual theaters the human race has ever known. Dark and derelict buildings with huge rooms, high ceilings, and rotting floors, filled with every kind of junk, and with men, in every state of undress and every kind of sexual act. For many of the men who participated, it was a soul-searing experience that shaped them for the rest of their lives. None were more affected than Jim, who participated in characteristically startling ways: once, in a dark and shadowy room filled with silent shadows and the muffled sounds of sexual pleasure and agony, Jim stood and recited Yeats with a declamatory, Shakespearean voice. 

The whirl of days at the United Nations, nights at the piers, and every moment in between spent working on art at the junkyard — at some point it all became too much for Mr. James Magee. He resolved to devote his life to art, but the resolution came with a rider: in order to do so he would have to get as far from the art world as he could. Thus began the trek that eventually landed Jim in Nowhere, Texas, where he found the hill he had seen in his dreams, bought it, and spent the next decades adorning it with four large stone buildings connected by giant stone walkways, and then creating the art to fill the buildings.  

"I enjoy working on things for long periods of time, whether people see them or not. My process is very slow, and the hill, or whatever I have done out there, is amenable to that.  I went out with a string and compass, and staked out where it would be. With that everything else was set. We had no architect, no blueprints, the entire construction was laid out with me pacing and using a string and a transom, that's it. The construction of the buildings was all in scribbles in my notebooks." 

The site seems more like an archeological dig than a gallery, covering 55,000 square feet. Two thousand four hundred tons of stone went into the buildings and walkways. After more than 20 years, Jim has completed the buildings and filled three with art. He is planning on spending the next 10 to 15 years completing the art for the fourth building. 

The art itself defies description. Giant works of many tons each. Steel and iron triptychs on huge ball bearings. Studies in rust and decay and detritus. Acid and honey. Beeswax and burnt rubber. Paprika and cold-rolled steel. Barbed wire and pig bone.  

This is only art I have ever seen that always leaves the viewer speechless, groping for but never finding an adequate reaction. This is partly because it is so surprising in scale and composition, partly because it is so stunning in detail and execution, but mostly because it is so intensely and profoundly personal. Going to the hill is not like going to view art, but going into the dreams and imagination and bones, blood, and muscle of James Magee. 

Everything seems to be constructed of industrial debris, but in truth there are very few found objects in the works. Jim makes his own junk from scratch, welding and machining and casting and pouring it, rusting and cracking and breaking and burning it. "You can't find all the found objects that you need. People start from different points. It’s their makeup that decides how they begin. I begin in my head, from my gut. I can't find my sketches readily along a roadside."  

Jim gives these works titles which often run on to several pages of text. Poems, really. His idea is that you stand in front of one of his works, and as you view it he stands behind you and whispers the title in your ear. If the titles alone were the sum total of his artistic output, Jim would be an American poet of the first order:

"Then tell me Jerusalem,
Where to begin when Hartley walks across the floor as Hartley
to press the bread against my head
the sun lies cracked
a broken dish upon the field
a pinch of salt
2 eggs
some batter
a shake of flour a little yeast a little later in October
when trees turn color against our barn
And he's returned from beyond to plant the corn between the cracks of dried Christian blood
For Hartley had the darkness flowing in his veins from birth
Like the red black river he dug up one day under the gray rock by the back fence and drank it into his head
so now instead of my soup he's got that on his brain, never mind my bread
nor ever happy nor even mean
just queer about nothing ever being right or wrong
like the way he wears his hat is too much to one side and it's his head to begin with
or I tell you forget that the rock out back is dead, he calls it Dad, even if it tilts like his face out of control
and the morning air on a clear day fresh as a bouquet of roses is either too hot or too cold for poor Hartley
lord. guess we're both growing old along with Jerusalem on this Texas farm
Sometimes when the light goes out I see it there, a great city half hidden among our trees, ancient as sequins glittering black between me and the trap I set for it every night with the head of Christ pitched atop a clothesline pole high above the yard, floating as a dream forum, a body torn from itself, above a still older tower of voices trying to sing through the stone
You're not alone Hartley
Your friend Lester too laments that ruined city
he sees it out there at dusk, charred and rubbled, the millennia washing over its walls, the crowd cheers and clears away from a field
Lester gets up off his knees, too soon I think to wrap a wound.
But let him wail until my bread rises in the pan
for I know of no more tender beauty than that of a gentle man like Lester quaking in his heart
and cradling as if it were a child in late afternoon that ancient tower of voices fading slowly from his hands" 

Very few people have seen the hill over the years Jim has worked on it. It is not open to the public, not advertised, has no art biz huckster boasting of its import. Yet he has poured his life into it, thousands of hours of labor, and tens of thousands of dollars of materials. It is a life's work, more so than any other work by any other artist I have known. And it has been seen by only a handful of people. Jim has very deliberately created a work that can never be sold, will never acquire any market value, can never be moved, and is even difficult to find. 

One of the earliest visitors to the hill was May Carson, who runs the truck stop and gift shop which is the town of Cornudas. A former truck driver who prides herself on being the self-appointed mayor of the town of three (or four) (or five), she describes the works on the hill as  

• Pyramids. Is that good enough? It's all of that. I think he's got the same concept. 

• He said he was going to build this building, and wanted to know if he could borrow some water to put the cement together. I told him sure. In another couple of years, he said "Do you think you could loan me some more water to build some more?" I said, "Sure, why not?" Then he said he wanted to build three this time. I said, "Three? What happened, did your ship come in?" So we started on the other three. I've been in all of them.  

• Of course all the people in this area think he's a nut. I've even had some people think he's a devil worshipper because of the pedestals up there. They've been up there peeking, they peek through them doors. In place of them thinking it’s something to put art on they think it’s some kind of pulpit or something. They said, "Well, have you seen his work?" And I said, "No not really, but if I just call him he'll show me." And they said, "Oh May, don't go.'" 

• I don't know how to describe [his art]. One of a kind, I guess. Maybe [they are about] life. 

There is another El Paso-based artist with whom Jim is close, an elderly recluse named Annabel Livermore. Annabel is a retired school librarian who is spending her sunset years painting watercolors of flowers and oil paintings of fantastic landscapes that seem to come more from the Mexican side of the border than the gringo side. In stark contrast to Jim, she has done quite well in the art market over the last decade or so. 

Annabel has risen from total obscurity to stardom in the Texas art world. Her dealer, Adair Margot, says that Annabel is the only artist her gallery has ever shown who sells out entire shows. Her work has been featured in two books, one on paintings of flowers by the noted English art critic Edward Lucie Smith, the other a survey of American landscape painters in which Annabel is presented as a sort of spokeswoman for the American Southwest.

Annabel decided to celebrate her success by donating a vase of flowers to each patient in the Thomason Hospital in El Paso every Christmas. An accompanying card reads, "With this card I wish you health and happiness, Annabel Livermore." Eventually, the hospital invited Annabel to design and paint a non-denominational chapel for the facility, which she did.

One of the most remarkable things about Annabel's work is the passion it evokes among her fans. Adair Margot: She has really touched people's heartstrings here. She has processed the border region in a very unselfconscious way. People look at it and say, "This is who we are, we love this work." 

"We started from scratch. Annabel didn't have any real notoriety or name. She didn't even have a real resume, like the arts schools that she went to or the museums that she was in. Her resume was a school librarian's. But people bought the work anyway, even though it wasn't really tied to the art world. I mean, it was shown in art galleries, but it wasn't with assurances of Annabel rising to stardom. People loved it and they bought it because they loved it. And they are not all wealthy people. One woman bought an Annabel for $5000 and pays us $100 a month. She's a schoolteacher."

 What is perhaps most remarkable about Annabel's success is that it has not been undermined as it has gradually become known that she does not exist in any conventional sense, but is the creation of Jim Magee. But "creation" is not the right word. "Persona" is the word her dealer eventually settled upon. Personality? Alter ego? Perhaps the precise word does not exist.  

Years ago, a much younger Jim Magee was living in upstate New York and doing his first experiments with the gnarled, rusted, almost terrifying art that would fill his life for the coming decades. He made an experimental film in the same vein, and sent it to the brothers in a Christian monastery in France where he had spent some time. The monks wrote back their response: "We're sorry you feel so bad. We suggest you take some time to look around and appreciate God's good works." 

Jim went straight out with canvass and paints and painted some flowers. He found the exercise profound, but so totally removed from the other work he was doing that he did not see how one person could work in both directions at the same time, and Annabel Livermore was born. 

Among the many things that Annabel is, there are a few things she is not. She is not a marketing scam. And she is not a drag queen. Annabel has her own studio, in a detached room behind the garden at Jim's El Paso home. And her association with Jim Magee has been accepted by her fans in El Paso, one of the most conservative cities in one of the most conservative states in the US. In fact, one of her supporters has been Laura Bush, former First Lady of Texas and currently the First Lady of the United States. "She loved Annabel," Adair remembers, "and saw the work, and then later invited Annabel to exhibit her work in her offices at the state capitol in Austin." 

Janice Keller is an El Paso socialite whose husband Bobby does real estate deals across the border in Mexico. She speaks with a long Texas drawl and belongs to the El Paso Country Club. She and her husband have a beautiful split level home from which Bobby leaves to make his deals in a shiny SUV. Once a year Janice and Bobby take their kids on a gambling vacation in Las Vegas. Janice is so passionate about Annabel’s painting that it would be fair to say she has in part built her life around Annabel. Not only is Janice the proud owner of several of Annabel's works, but she changes the flowers every day at the hospital chapel, and puts together a group of ladies to deliver Annabel's flowers to the hospital’s patients each Christmas. She knows the connection between Jim and Annabel, accepts it and lets it go. 

The first time I met Janice was at the hospital chapel. The walls of the chapel are lined with Annabel's watercolors, the frames of which are on hinges. Small bits of paper and pencils sit on ledges below, and visitors are invited to leave prayers and thoughts for their loved ones in cubbyholes behind the paintings. Janice clears out the prayers when she changes the flowers each day. She now has several thousand prayers, and an idea of what to do with them as well: “I think Annabel should make a calendar with twelve of her nicest works, one for each month, and we will pick 365 of the nicest prayers and put one on each day." Janice turns to Jim. "So Jim, if you would, please tell Annabel I have this calendar idea." Jim says nothing. 

Now that the link between Jim and Annabel has become more broadly known in Texas, some of Annabel's fans have been more exposed to the work of Jim Magee. Laura Bush herself has been to the hill, with an entourage of secret security and a police helicopter overhead. And though Jim's work is difficult for Annabel fans, they give it their full attention and seem to remain unshakable in their allegiance to Annabel, regardless of their reaction to Jim. Janice explains that "Jim’s sculptures are so harsh to me, they scare me. I can see myself, if I could, watching Annabel paint, and Annabel would be painting, and it would be Jim. But I find it hard in my mind to picture Jim doing Jim Magee's work. What would he be like? I wonder, I don't know. Would he be attacking something viciously, or putting each thing very carefully down, like everything obviously is, but with all of the force of the metals he uses and all of that kind of thing, that's really harsh to me. If I ever got to see either one of them do the real work, I'd rather see Annabel than Jim." 

I find Annabel's work beautiful, Jim's titles extraordinary, and the hill profound. But what I love most of all is the package as a whole. Jim's path has cut a dizzying trail through locales and social settings as disparate as the United Nations bureaucracy, the Manhattan art world, the gay Manhattan underworld, the genteel world of El Paso socialites, and the isolation of Cornudas, Texas. He has worked in film, sculpture, architecture, steel and ironwork, painting, and large-scale construction, without ever thinking about "mixed media." He has become two people without trying to be weird or schizophrenic. He has struggled every inch of the way: with difficult materials like rust and steel, with sandstorms and blistering heat, with his own personal demons. Through it all he has uncompromisingly followed connections and imperatives he felt deeply, even if he was not sure why. What he has done in short is lead a creative life. 

After knowing Jim for years, I proposed to him I set his titles to music, and he enthusiastically agreed. It was a given that Jim would  read the titles himself, both because of their intensely personal nature and because of the uniquely musical in which he reads them. I wanted to write for a solo string instrument, as an instrumental compliment of Jim’s voice, and asked cellist Joan Jeanrenaud if she would premiere the work. Joan had been the cellist in the Kronos Quartet for 20 years. She had been recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. One result of the diagnosis was that she left the Kronos Quartet in order to be able to focus her creative energies on projects of her own choosing. I was delighted when she agreed to accept my project with Jim as her first post-Kronos endeavor.  

I try to build all my projects on direct personal relationships, so the first step was to get Joan to Texas to meet Jim and see his hill. Joan, her cello, and I flew from San Francisco to El Paso, where we loaded into Jim’s decrepit old pick-up and headed into the desert. Out there in the Texas sun, surrounded by dirt and rock and bright light and snakes and spiders and bones and carcasses (nothing decays on a human time scale in the desert) and huge vistas and endless celestial canopies and desperate plants clawing their way through the earth’s crust and Jim’s stone buildings and gnarled sculptures, one comes unavoidably face to face with the fine line between life and death, the omnipresence of mortality, and the smallness of the whole human endeavor.  

Each of us was feeling a special connection to confrontation. My connection was the weakest: I have HIV, though I have been fortunate enough that it has thus far caused me no serious problems. Joan’s connection was much deeper, with her recent MS diagnosis and the looming possibility of losing her muscle coordination. Jim’s connection was the most acute. But then, this was Jim’s desert, Jim’s spiritual and artistic abode.  

Jim was diagnosed with AIDS very early in the epidemic, and somehow had survived the dark years when the only treatment available was AZT, a drug which turned out to provide little benefit but was itself extremely toxic, particularly in the huge doses prescribed at the outset of the epidemic before anyone knew better. Some years ago weird things started happening in Jim’s feet. He got tuberculosis in his feet. He got repeated bone infections. None of these were typical AIDS complications. His doctors were stumped. Was he being exposed to some sort of toxicity at his metal working shop? The problems accumulated until the doctors amputated first one of Jim’s legs and then the other. They finally concluded that the bizarre feet problems must have been the consequence of all the AZT he had taken. It is possible that losing one’s legs is the expected outcome of taking that much AZT, but no one knows because almost everyone who took that much AZT died. At this point Jim has had over 30 surgeries. He has mastered the hospital routine. He takes the doctors’ orders as “suggestions.” He refuses to wear hospital clothing. He gets wheeled in to surgery wearing a dinner jacket. 

Out in the desert, Jim told Joan the story of how he had come to terms with his loss of limbs. He had just come out of his first hospitalization due to weird goings-on in his feet, and was wearing the first of many braces doctors would give him between that moment and his later double amputation. The doctors had told him to find a new line of work as he would no longer be able to make sculpture in the desert. For Jim those were fighting words. He headed straight to the Big Bend wilderness with his paints and 18 pieces of plywood to begin work on what would become known as the Annabel Livermore Big Bend series. He was struggling to learn to walk with a brace. He had his easel set up at the roadside observation point in Santa Elena Canyon, when a black van pulled up next to him and out jumped a dog and a beautiful, strapping young man whose short pants and short-sleeved shirt fully revealed two prosthetic legs and one prosthetic arm. Dog and the man bounded off across the rugged terrain as Jim watched, transfixed. When the man returned to his vehicle, Jim left his easel and approached, awkwardly saying something about how he couldn’t help but notice how athletic the man was given his multiple amputations. The man looked down at the brace on Jim’s leg, then looked Jim in the eye and said, “When they have to take that leg off, let it go,” and then jumped back in the black van and sped off. Jim was stunned. At that point the idea that he might eventually lose even one limb had not even entered his head. The encounter stayed with him for years, through the ordeal of losing first one leg and then the other. “He has been a spiritual presence for me ever since,” Jim explained to Joan. “My angel who revealed himself to me.”  

Joan listened to this story dumbstruck. She knew this man. She was sure of it. How many athletic triple amputees with a dog and a black van could there be? She knew him well. In fact, this man had once been her lover.  

I do not believe that coincidence reveals any a divine plan or cosmic truth, but I do believe that meaningful relationships are often forged when we are willing go through doors that have unexpectedly opened before us. Serendipity is often an opportunity to let one’s guard down in the company of others doing the same. In this case the result was Desert Boy on a Stick, a concert-length work for cello and spoken word, premiered by Jim Magee and Joan Jeanrenaud at Colorado College in the spring of 2001.

-Bob Ostertag