John Helvin

John Helvin

John Helvin during an interview in February 2011
Born John Guiry
(1963-12-09) 9 December 1963
Swindon, United Kingdom

John Helvin (born John Guiry; 9 December 1963) is an English artist, author and magician.

Life and career

Helvin was born in Swindon. His parents were Irish. Helvin legally changed his surname when he was old enough to do so.[1] He has a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Humanities with Classical Studies.[2] His career has been a varied one due to a number of personal tragedies. After each one, he took a different direction to build a new life. He has been a ghost writer, an artist, an editor, a publisher and a magician. In his early years he wrote and directed comedy for local venues.[3] In recent years he has ceased being anonymous in his writings and his name is now put on published articles and books. In January 2009, videos became available on the internet publicising a commissioned art project called Magicians. It consisted of portraits of many British and some American magicians (including Paul Daniels, Wayne Dobson, Tommy Cooper, Penn & Teller and Ricky Jay).[3] He has been described as having "huge talent as a magical portrait artist".[4] His portrait of James Randi received positive notice by Phil Plait of the James Randi Educational Foundation.[5] The project was completed in early 2010. He has contributed articles to magazines such as Classical Association News (ISSN 963-4789, published by The Classical Association.), Magicseen (published by MSUK Publications), The LaBaL (published by Al Smith), Mystery Magazine (published by Magic Books By Post) and Goodliffe's Abracadabra (which closed down at the end of March 2009). See the Recent Published Works for examples of these.

Recent Published Works

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Goodliffe's Abracadabra, issue 3258, 5 July 2008, ISSN 0001-3269
  2. ↑ Open University website, blog profile
  3. 1 2 The Art of Magic, Interview in Magicseen, The Magazine for Magicians & Mentalists, Issue 28, September 2009
  4. ↑ MagicWeek, issue number 478, 22 August 2009.
  5. ↑ James Randi Educational Foundation
  6. ↑ Word Power Books

External links

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