Located along Highway 12 in Baraboo, Wisconsin, is a metal art scrapyard which defies explanation. Commentary? Why bother? Is it part of a categorical genre or label? No such classification exists. Materials? How about carburetors, generators, brass copper, steel, early x-ray machines, scrapped vehicles, saw blades, oxidized pipe, theater speakers, river barges and rusty hamburger signs; to name just a few components. Is it a time travel machine or a rigorously sane ecological statement?
On a reasoned level, it is the stockpiling of all the shapes, forms and mechanisms of the industrial age, with parts gathered from all over world. Capped by a copper-clad glass ball, the top section is a constructed space capsule.
Look hard and see it all: junk heaps of industry, contaminated plastics, reused industry surplus, rejected A-frame houses, historical artifacts, agricultural detritus, and utilitarian mechanical remnants, the brilliant discoveries that have altered the way that man influences the world.
Peer out into sublime vastness of the solar system, imagine a tumble through the abyss of geological time, and one can not help but think, too, of how infinitesimal the moment of our own existence now appears. To the fantastical soul, how futile seems the span of an individual life!
Forevertron Sculpture
Beauty is indeed in the metaphysical. And there are plenty of both – marvelous beauty and freedom of interpretation – here at the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world. All you have to do is accept the scenic and historical integrity of the site, resist definition, let your thoughts synthesize, smile, and you will be just fine. After all, it is only a complex, futuristic assemblage to be used as a means to transport to the heavens that you are looking at. Nothing more, nothing less.
“Instead of imposing your interpretation, it’s best to leave it alone,” says Tom Every, aka Dr. Evermore, the progenitor of this artistic innovation, during our June 2010 interview.
“I don’t impose my interpretation here, but I let others find their own interpretations. People that are stymied come here and pick up the brushes of energy. It’s a place to get the imagination and inspiration going, and what more can you really do for people than that?”
This is the good doctor’s world at Forevertron, a fascinating salvage of bits and pieces of machineries, bridging the industrial revolution to today’s computer-driven, de-industrialized dimensions; between fifty to one hundred years old, parts stand welded and bolted together for stability. Historical components include a pair of bipolar electrical dynamos constructed by Thomas Edison, in the late nineteenth century, and a decontamination chamber from the Apollo Space Mission.
Doctor Evermore
An outspoken man of Cockney descent, Every appears intimidating, but in actuality he is a warmhearted, friendly eccentric who could gab for hours about his work – and energy force. Born in 1938, country kid Tom O. Every was enthralled by scrap, steel and junk. Traveling by bicycle through the quiet streets of Brooklyn, Wisconsin, he sought out unusual objects to turn into useful gadgetry. This childhood fascination with such materials led to a career in industrial wreckage.
As a salvage man, Every traveled to factories and industrial sites dismantling obsolete machinery, and he soon shifted from wrecker of shambles to preserver of clutter, hoarding odd shapes and forms that he felt would soon somehow disappear from the landscape, such as tank ends with interesting rivets or brewery furnaces.
He sorted and saved as many unusual components as space and energy allowed, by his estimate about a thousand tons. About this time, he renounced his old ideas and business plans, becoming reborn as Dr. Evermore, and through this new identity, he built Forevertron.
The mission of Forevertron, its mantra, the title of Doctor Evermore and the alter ego’s artistic credence – they are part of the entertaining language and educational life force of what has become the world’s biggest, most visually balanced kinetic sculpture – twenty-five years rooted in the invaluable spirit of restless exploration and perceptive gathering.
Tom Every
Ultimately, pushed against this steely reserve of earthly time and its transience, Every, 72, like many of us, dreams of posterity. His weathered face shows the many years of toiling outdoors and his raspy voice leads one to assume that he used to chain-smoke the cigars that he now only chews on. Strands of gray and white hair stick out behind his full-brim hat.
Despite this gruff exterior, Every’s passion for art is fresh and innocuous. He does not hunger for fame or for utility, but hopes for a lasting monument, and, in the interim, a secure place on earth to illustrate his energies, and to muse over the question of extinction, the march of time, and man’s place in the universe. And to, well, just live like a young boy enthralled by metal.
Brian D'Ambrosio - Brian D'Ambrosio is the author of more than 500 published articles and seven books, including From Haikus to Hatmaking: A Year in the Life ...
