Dean Carnegie

Dean Carnegie
ca. 2007
Born	? Baltimore, Maryland

Dean Alan Carnegie is an American stage magician, escape artist and painter. He has appeared on numerous television programs and has performed for three different US Presidents. He is called 'The Artist of Mystery'.

History

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, he grew up on a horse and cattle farm in Fauquier County, Virginia. He became interested in magic at the age of 8 after watching the movie Houdini starring Tony Curtis. Later a performance of the Houdini Water Torture Cell by magician Doug Henning helped to seal his fascination of the art of magic. In his formative years as a magician he learned mostly from magic books. He loved magic but his first love was escapes because of he had been highly influenced by the life of Houdini. One year the local branch of his Post Office challenged him to escape from one of their postal service mailbags and he successfully escaped. Carnegie performed as often as he could in his teens and after he graduated he enrolled in a special course in magic called The Chavez Course of Magic and Manipulation.

Artist

Carnegie won a scholarship for art school, but instead put all his attention towards performing. In 1997, Carnegie began painting again. His subject matter is usually focused on magicians. He has created more than 30 magic-related works of art. His artwork has appeared in numerous magazines. The July/August 2005 issue of Elan magazine featured one of his paintings on the cover. In August & September 2007 two of his paintings graced the cover of MAGIC, making him the only magician in the history of the magazine to appear on two consecutive covers.

Magic

One of his inspirations and netors was his friend, Cesareo Pelaez from the Le Grand David Spectacular Magic Company. Another close friend and mentor in escapes is Steve Baker, known during his career as Mr. Escape. His other inspirations include Jack Benny, Abbott & Costello, Johnny Carson, and Richiardi .

In 2001, Carnegie held the office of Mid-Atlantic Regional Vice President for the Society of American Magicians. From 2002-2005 Carnegie performed in his own theatre dubbed The Underground Magic Theatre in Sterling, Virginia. Today Carnegie is a full time performing magician. He also writes a bi-monthly column on magic for a magic periodical. He has co-authored two books on escapes called The Escape Biz Volumes 1&2. The Washington Post wrote about him, "Take Howie Mandel's boyish bald charm, mix it with David Copperfield's magical charisma and poof! You get Dean Carnegie, known as Carnegie: Artist of Mystery."

Carnegie also is very interested in magic history and authors several blogs on the topic.

Publications

• The Escape Biz Volume 1, (2005)
• The Escape Biz Volume 2, (2006)

References

This page incorporated content from Dean Carnegie, a page hosted on Wikipedia. Please consult the history of the original page to see a list of its authors. Therefor, this article is also available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• Times Community Newspaper, Weekender, HOCUS-POCUS article by A. Greely
• Loudoun Magazine, January 2004, article by Jane Smith
• Elan Magazine, July/August 2005, pgs 36-39
• MAGIC Magazine, September 2007, Stagewrite Publishing Inc.,pages 54–57
• The ART OF DECEPTION, by Chuck Romano, published by Chuck Romano Magic, Second Edition 2008, pgs 339-340
• Washington Post, MAGIC MAN, by Kris Coronado October 27, 2008

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