Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin

Christopher Jon Luke Dowgin (Born January 23, 1972) is an illustrator, Dance Painter, writer, musician, and dancer. He has written 12 books and illustrated 10 and is known for his Salem Trilogy and his series of books on the tunnels in Salem and those who built them. He is a 3-time winner of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant and is written up in Legendary Locals of Salem

Dowgin has illustrated 10 books including the "Salem Trilogy", "Mr. Pelinger's House & Intergalactic Roadshow", "Max Teller's Amazing Adventure", and the "Tyler Boy on the Move" series. His style is close to Ivan Albright and Francis BaCon with the imagery of John Tenniel's Alice in Wonderland and the various works of Arthur Rackham. He utilizes graphite, color pencil, and water colors. His work can be seen in public settings outside in Salem, MA.

Dowgin started Paint Dancing in 1992 behind live bands creating large scale works through a mixture of comedy, dancing, slam dancing, and painting. Since then he has painted behind several national and local bands in clubs and festivals on Boston's North Shore. He was inspired by an episode of That's INCredible which featured an artist paint Jimi Hendrix in the time it took to play Voodoo Child. He has used baked beans, corned BeEF and cabbage, window caulking, road top repair, and acrylic in his paintings. They tend to be six foot by nine foot and they are created with wide sweeping movements while dancing.

Dowgin has written 12 books and is contributing author and editor of "Arkham: Tales from the Flipside". Beyond his young adult illustrated titles he is known for the series of books based on politicians from Salem, Massachusetts who formed the foundation of America and the tunnels they had built. The first is called "Salem Secret Underground:The History of the Tunnels in the City" and its sequel is "Sub Rosa". He also runs a successful tour company called Salem Smugglers' Tour based on the books. The Sinclair Narratives is one of the series of stories that run in "Arkham:Tales from the Flipside" which is set in Salem from 1398 to the present day highlighting the adventures of Prince Henry Sinclair. Sinclair is famous for his connection to the Westford Knight and his journey to America in 1398. In the tales it is revealed that Sinclair is an immortal who sailed to Salem with a Viking crew to hide the grail in the new world after the Templars fled to Scotland. In the stories we meet George Peabody who is the progenitor o f JP Morgan Chase and his time machine, Elias Hasket Derby Jr. who was called back to Salem after his father's death from India and Egypt where he was transformed into a Vampire, Rabbi Longinus who also is an immortal who helps preserve the grail, the Salem East India Marine Society and its president Stephen White who is after the grail, a homeless teen who slips through lucidity who is Lazarus reincarnated, and a whole cast of monsters, ghosts, and demons.

He has been playing flute and piano for 20 years. His flute playing draws on the traditional Japanese styles of Shakuhachi and Noh mixed with modern stylings of Native American flute and Jazz Fusion. It is mostly heavy on the bass and rhythmic punctuated with a somber quality of silence. It is a music style that entrances and places its listeners into a meditative state. he plays 40 different native flutes ranging from cultures as diverse from Bolivia to India. Some of the flutes he plays are tarka, mocino, quena, recorders, and slide whistles. Performing throughout Boston's North Shore he has played in clubs and festivals. He has an album of flute and ambient piano called Cosmic Play. If he is not seen playing he is dancing. He has been a fixture since the early 90's and has been nicknamed Crazy Legs at the Lowell Folk Festival.

Early life

Dowgin was born January 23, 1972 in Princeton, New Jersey to Gerald Martin Dowgin who was a bill drafter for the Office of Legislative Services in New Jersey and Karin Helene Dowgin (née Madsen.) He is of Norse-Irish, Norwegian, Irish, and English origin. His grandfather Captain Ralph Dowgin was a New Jersey State Police Trooper who solved a famous Palisades [...] case and his brother Captain David Dowgin was in charge of the Lindbergh Kidnapping case. His Great Grandfather was Edward G Hulton who left England and gave up the Daily Dispatch and a few other newspapers he founded. His father was Edward Hulton (senior) who founded the newspaper empire Hulton & Co. based in Manchester, England. The Hulton's printing building was once the largest in Europe at the time on the corner of Withy Street in Manchester. Now the Print house is The Printworks. Edward G. Hulton switched his name to Edward S. Hulton and moved to NYC after an argument with his father. Edward Ned Hulton the Senior then found a Mr. Lytham at the race track who looked enough like his son and had him become him. Edward G. Hulton worked as a Boss printer for JH Tooker in NYC printing early silent film poster for Vitagraph and later movies like Gone with the Wind before owning his own print shop. On Dowgin's mother's side he is related to Kristian Ringholm von der Lippe Hammer Archbishop Northern Europe.

After living in Dayton, New Jersey his family moved to Whiting, NJ in the Pine Barrens. Manchester Township, which had engulfed Whiting, was the location of the Hindenburg disaster. In the borough in the center of Manchester is Lakehurst which proudly displays a blimp on the town's water tower and police cars. Very similar to Dowgin's later home in Salem, Massachusetts which has a witch on the water tower and police cars after that town's disaster. While in New Jersey he had seen Lisanti Foods run the local pizza shops and distribute [...], heard of children being killed in Arsaco mineral pit by the mob (a parcel once owned by Joseph Parisi who was indicted for murdering 2 garbage union leaders. Parisi was a member of [...] Inc. ) Parisi also developed the Fox Hollow and Roosevelt City sections of Whiting which he envisioned as a city to rival NYC in the 20's, but only sold few parcels after [...] out the roads and installing a few gas lamps. He did sell 20 acres to a masseuse couple who sold themselves as doctors who started the nudist colony Nature's Rest. Dowgin grew up just outside of the ruins of the colony. Before moving to Salem he was on top of Crow's Hill when Richard Rodgers the Last Call Killer had deposited a dismembered corpse at the bottom of the hill on the railroad tracks.

Also as he was leaving Manchester TWP the town went into receivership after they found out Joseph Portash, an ex-mayor turned town administrator had faked his death. A town veterinarian from Bridgton, Maine had signed his death certificate and he had a closed casket funeral. Portash had bankrupt the town with several blank vouchers coming in for payment, especially from Atlantic City. Two weeks after Portash's death a mysterious twin brother was seen in Harrison, Maine near Portash's lake mansion on Long Lake (Maine). Portash had previously sidestepped an indictment that went on to make precedence in the Supreme Court. The US Supreme Court ruled that evidence the state used to convict Robert J. Smertz, who was the owner of the Boston Celtics, of bribing Portash $25,000 to let a land deal go through could not be used in his own trial. Even though this prevented him from becoming mayor ever again, but they elected his wife for a term, they gave him the job of Town Administrator for the rest of his life. As Town Administrator he was able to rob the town about a million dollars a year for 20 years.

Salem Massachusetts

Dowgin moved to Salem in 1992 to attend Montserrat College of Art after seeing a catalog of classes in illustration that ended up not being offered. In fact they were not offered in several years. So after much disappointment he left the school but stayed in the town because he loved the people he met. For most of his tenure in Salem he lived in the Bridge Street Neck area off of Collins Cove. In Salem he has become a fixture with his quart of milk and long scarf in the winter. If you have not met him, you have seen him. Either while he is dancing, playing flute, painting, or just walking by. In 2013 he was chosen to be one of the entries in the book "Legendary Local of Salem." Also the city commissioned him to have his painting from "A Walk Through Salem" depicting the Hawthorne Hotel as a game token on a Monopoly Board with Rich Uncle Penny Bags crossing the street hang from the kiosk in front of Old Town Hall.

In his time in Salem he has learned its history from 1398 up to the present. He runs the Salem Smugglers' Tour which highlights the stories of how people from Salem have shaped American history and delves into the tunnels in the city and who built them.

Illustrated books

Dowgin's first book published was "A Walk Through Salem" which is a tale akin to a fairy tale for adults which brings you the reader into the story as the main character. You are introduced to Mr. Zac in the Common who uses a large magnet to unzip the Unzipping Tree so you can walk through it into the magical whimsical side of Salem. A Place where flying fish stop a traffic lights, churches transform into rocket ships, tall ships drop anchor next to parking meters, and Vikings storm Dead Horse Beach. This is the first of the three books that make up the Salem Trilogy. The style is similar to Ivan Albright and Francis Bacon. Elements depicted are more like imagery from Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the various books of Arthur Rackham. The central character is based on Ed Wynn. This is his last posthumous role and he plays a character similar in nature as Willie Wonka.

His second book was its sequel "A Walk Under Salem". In researching for this book he found stories of the tunnels in Salem by sneaking into open houses and rummaging through his friends' shop basements. In the process he gathered enough information for a second nonfiction book entitled "Salem Secret Underground: The History of the Tunnels in the City." "A Walk Under Salem" is a tale that Mr. Zac brings you into the tunnels of Salem to look for the golden egg of the boy emperor's soul before an international war starts. As in the first books local people from Salem are transformed into magical characters which help bring the world of the story into your real life. The Salem Trilogy follows the structure of the journey of the hero that Joseph Campbell outlined in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which serves as a self-actualization tale. So seeing real life characters from the story walk past you hammers the symbols and archetypes home in your subconsciousness. It is like that scene when Dorothy wakes up and says, "You, and you, were there!" The illustrations are handled similarly as the first book utilizing acrylic, watercolor, colored pencils, and graphite. "A Walk through Salem" and "A Walk Under Salem" won 3 Mass Cultural Commission grants for their printing and a self-guided walking tour through the city as you read the book to the locations illustrated. In some shops that appear in the book you can venture in and see large prints of the illustrations and the sketches that were used to make them. Within the next year with the aid of virtual reality glasses and GPS you will be able to look at a building illustrated in the book and see the illustration replace it with animation.

At the same time as Norge Forge Press published "A Walk Under Salem" they released "The Wizard of Lynn", "The Moon, the Sun, and 2 Fish", and "Jasper: A Bunny's Tale" which were written and illustrated previously. His 7th book was the final chapter in the Salem Trilogy called "A Walk Above Salem". In this tale you fly in a Caddy Balloon with millions of readers at the same time above Salem as a war is raged between the sexes. A battle between the Mack Industrial School for Girls and the Salem Boy's Fraternity. The weapons of choice; pea shooters and Nerf guns. Once again all of the characters depicted in the story are taken from real locals.

His 8th book was "Gang Stories", an emerging reader with only one page of type. Emerging readers are picture books that encourage those not ready to read yet to invent their own stories based on the pictures. "Gang Stories" are the adventures of 4 stuffed animals in the middle of the night while their child is asleep. The first story is about Teddy Bear who is watching the Princess Bride on TV is disturbed by an evil tree spirit whose shadow comes through the window to attack the child. Teddy Bear throws his honey spoon aside, boxes the tree spirit back out of the window, and goes back to eating honey and watching his movie. The next follows Gus the bear off the bed as the bedroom and house transforms into London. Gus now dressed as Sherlock Holmes is on the hunt of the elusive honey pot. Along the way reality pokes through and you can see the real furniture and the kitchen cabinets the buildings of London are made of. The next tale is about Guff the bear who has his hair in his eyes who is reading The Great Gatsby to us. Even if the hair was not in his eyes, his interpretation would not be true since he can not read. So what you have instead is a Daliesque narrative with a rat in medieval court garments, a Knight in Pantaloons, and a Bishop that visit him in turn as the floor and the walls in the room melt to show the night's sky with a fisherman on the moon. The last tale is about Harriet the invisible rabbit. An homage to Harvey (film). Harriet thinks she is a secret agent. She flies a toy plane out of the bedroom, parachutes onto a breakfast table with the child's parents eating, bypasses a laser field to confront an evil genius and his cat to break into a vault that in reality is a refrigerator filled with carrots.

This was followed by "Max Teller's Amazing Adventure". Here Max Teller approaches a balloon seller in the Boston Common near the Frog Pond and grabs for a red balloon. Instead he gets every balloon besides the red balloon and floats away with a snail on top of the bunch. Max and the snail then fly over Boston and beyond through the North Shore. On the voyage he flies over many Boston and North Shore landmarks like Hammond Castle and the Orange Dinosaur in Saugus. This was followed by "Mr. Pelinger's House & Intergalactic Roadshow." Here the Foster Siblings enter an abandoned house after walking past it for years. One day the door was open and they venture in. Here they meet Mr. Pelinger who emerges from an old nautical map after a steam boat steams through the map. In short time Pelinger invites them to escape through a keyhole after a small fishing fleet of row boats and canoes fly at their heads in the foyer. They need to exit before the tall ships return. As they climb through the keyhole, since Pelinger lost the key, up a ladder to the top of the Tree of Life which happens to be under the rafters of the attic. There they see a horse nebula before jumping between the branches of the tree to land in the Intergalactic Roadshow. The Roadshow's ringmasters are Sitting Bull and the elephant Old Bet in one ring and General George Armstrong Custer and some silly aliens in the other. Within the roadshow the siblings play a dangerous moral tale of Snakes and Ladders. In Custer's rings the siblings might be swallowed by a snake at the end of a roller coaster or in Sitting Bull's ring they might ride with a Bumble Bear.

Nonfiction

Dowgin's first nonfiction work was "Salem Secret Underground: The History of the Tunnels in the City." It gives the history of Elias Hasket Derby Jr. who went through a fifth or 38th of the largest estate in American history in less than 2 years. Now the son of America's first millionaire needs a day job in 1801. This coincides with Thomas Jefferson's new custom duties which are unfavorable in Federalist Salem. Following Charles Bulfinch's lead in Boston when he filled in the mud flats off the Charles River to make the Back Bay neighborhoods, Derby will create the Salem Common Improvement Fund to raise money to fill in the 5 ponds and the river leading to Collins Cove with tunnel dirt. Above board the subscription was to be a beautification program of a local park. He had 158 subscribers pay for the project and utilize the descendants of our nation's first National Guard to dig the tunnels and beautify the park. The subscribers included Associate Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Crowninshield, Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, Senator Nathaniel Silsbee, and many others. Tunnels that George Washington, John Adams,John Quincy Adams, and James Monroe walked through. As inspired by Bulfinch who built the Poor Farm building, Looby Asylum, Old Town Hall, and the Essex Bank Building in town the tunnels would be attached to the homes through the fireplace arches in the basement. Once attached to the fireplace arches it created a draw system for the tunnel to receive fresh air and alleviated the previous flashing problem. The tunnels were attached to brick Federalist mansions that had four exterior chimneys.

Its sequel was "Sub Rosa" which continues the tales of tunnels in Salem and the country while developing a further understanding how these smugglers and politicians from Salem shaped the country's foundation and modern day. It goes on to elaborate on George Peabody who built an underground train station attached to his Eastern Railroad. Peabody would be one of the founders of the B&O Railroad. Peabody & Co. (his bank) would become Peabody, Morgan & Co. when he hires Junius Spencer Morgan. When JS Morgan dies the bank will become J.P. Morgan & Co.. In the Panic of 1837 George Peabody worked with Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Lionel de Rothschild created series of events that would be repeated every 0 years to crash the American economy including a mortgage scandal, a technology bubble, over speculating, and a culling of the banks. JPMorgan Chase has been recently fined for engineering the Financial crisis of 2007–2008 which led to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.

Also it goes over this nation's history of opium starting with Thomas Handasyd Perkins who was the supercargo on the second American ship to sail to China. After escaping with his life from Haiti during the Haitian Revolution he leaves behind the slave trade to sell opium through Canton into China. A tory cousin had left New England to become minister to Turkey with access to Turkish opium that could be cut with Indian opium of better quality. He established his nephew John Perkins Cushing at the Thirteen Factories system in Caton to work with Howqua. Through this trade Howqua will at the end of his life be the richest man in the world. Cushing passes the business onto his Forbes nephews who sell it to Samuel Russell to become Russell & Company. John Murray Forbes would run it before he engages in railroads, Warren Delano Jr. (FDR's grandfather) was hired by them, and Russell Sturgis who will become head of Barings Bank. Samuel Russell's cousin was William Russell, who founded the Skull and Bones, will purchase Thomas H. Perkins property in New Haven to build their crypt on.

"Sub Rosa" also goes over the history of banking starting with Senator Nathaniel Silsbee, Joseph White, Stephen White, Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Crowninshield, and Associate Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story buying new mansions in 1811 as the First Bank of the United States loses its charter and England starts the War of 1812 to force us to create a new national bank to handle the war debt. In 1816 after the war the Second Bank of the United States is created with Joseph Story, Benjamin Crowninshield, and Nathaniel Silsbee as directors. Joseph White was a major stockholder and Stephen White inherited his shares after [...] his uncle and blaming others. During the Bank War Andrew Jackson visited Stephen White to discuss his not rechartering the bank. Soon after Andrew Jackson will suffer a failed assassination by Richard Lawrence in name of the bank. Also James Knox Polk as Speaker of the House would suffer a possible typhoid poisoning and live at the time for his support of Jackson. Polk would die 3 months after leaving office of Cholera or typhoid only a few months before Zachary Taylor dies of typhoid in office.

"Sub Rosa" details how the Joseph White [...], the [...] the American board game version of Cluedo is based on, by Stephen White involving Daniel Webster, whose son married Stephen White's daughter, led to 3 unaccounted presidential assassinations in attempts to create a third national bank. All spurred by a failed trip to visit Henry Clay when a cholera outbreak forced Webster and White from not entering Kentucky. Henry Clay founded the Whig Party to create a third bank of the United States and had Daniel Webster and Stephen White who was head of the National Republican Party for Massachusetts that merge with the Whigs as supporters. They rose William Harrison to president and kill him a month in office of typhoid for not supporting a new national bank the book assumes. After the death of Stephen White a few months after the president's death, in time Clay and Webster might of carried out the poisoning of presidents Polk and Taylor for thwarting the bank. In 1852 Webster and Clay will both die without seeing the bank created, but it would be for George Peabody's successor J.P. Morgan to create the Federal Reserve.

Also "Sub Rosa" goes over the various inventions and inventors from Salem like Moses Farmer who was the first to light a home by electricity, Charles Grafton Page who made a magnet capable of lifting a 1,000 pounds, Frank Poor who founded Sylvania, Packard Electrics which had advances in electric cars in the 1800s, Elihu Thomson who was half of General Electric, and Joseph Dixon who invented the #2 pencil, SLR lens, and anti counterfeit methods for the treasury.