A New Perspective From the Scraps of the Old

Note: All photos in this post, unless otherwise marked, taken by Flickr member pitt6rngs, also known as Greg.




Forevertron, image by Mister Joe.


photo by Greg


photo by Greg

Tom Every of Freedom, Wisconsin, knows a scholarly, Victorian-era professor named Dr. Evermor. In 1890, Dr. Evermor began building a machine to “perpetuate himself through the heavens on a magnetic lightning force beam inside a glass ball inside a copper egg.” The contraption he began building behind a surplus store, on the concrete slab left over from a demolished schoolhouse in Freedom is called Forevertron, and he (Every/Evermore) even constructed a gazebo called “The Teahouse,” complete with rather imposing thrones, for the King and Queen to have their imperial view. A 70-member bird-band is on hand to entertain them.


photo by Greg



photo by Greg


photo by Greg


photo by queenodesign.


photo by “What Jamie Found”

There are also Celestial Listening Ears, with two stations for listening to voices from the heavens. At the top of the entire contraption is a glass ball, strapped in copper, which will serve as Dr. Evermor’s space capsule.

At one time, not so long ago, you could take a tour of this--claimed to be the world’s largest sculpture formed of recycled scrap metal--Forevertron, a 300-ton kinetic sculpture, guided by Mr. Every himself. He would explain, “The Forevertron is built from important historical material, including those dynamos, which were constructed by [Thomas] Edison around 1882 -- they come from the Ford Museum. And this unit was the decontamination chamber from the Apollo space mission. A lot of the rest is from power houses from the 1920s.” He explained to the writers at RoadsideAmerica:

"The Apollo decontamination chamber was in three trailers [donated to a university]. We wrecked and scrapped most of it, but I kept the two autoclaves that the moon rocks were passed through...We contacted NASA to try to get papers authenticating it, and boy -- they're very touchy about what happened to that stuff. We did get the original drawings and it's the same damn thing."

photo by Greg


Photo by queenodesign


photo by whereling on Flickr

All the birds and all the bugs--some of them 15 tons of scrap metal teetering in the air over spindly legs--were created by this Dr. Evermor without the aid of models, sketches, or blueprints. And in fact, he’s never had any formal art training at all--he just grew up captivated by odd pieces of the refuse of society, which he started selling and trading at a young age, from a basket on his bike. As an adult, he went on to work in “industrial wreckage,” where he got some of the pieces he later used for his sculpture, which he began to build when he left that business in 1983. He had tired of destroying, of erasing these fascinating structures from the landscape of the country, and from the memories of its people. He wanted to create, and he wanted to remind. While he was building, he ceased to be Tom Every, and became Dr. Evermor.


photo by Great Beyond.


According to PBS’ Off The Map,

The Forevertron is made up of carburetors and generators, early x-ray machines and theater speakers, river barges and hamburger signs, to name just a few of its components. The end result is important to Dr. Evermor. Possibly more important, however, is that each historic piece speak for itself. His aim is to blend these objects while preserving their individuality and unique form: “Rather than imposing one’s will on something that’s already been created, you leave it alone and you just add or move another piece in as a blender that’ll tie it from one to another… things that were of historic significance we leave alone.” For example, the pair of late nineteenth-century bi-polar dynamos acquired from the Henry Ford Museum stand on their own while being seamlessly integrated into the Forevertron.

And, continuing with what appears to be developing here as a theme of animism and the curious power of charms, he explains:

These forms were made in a certain time frame, and we can pick up the energy of whoever the creator was, whether it be a small blade or something else. That unique form comes along again and is put in that place, so that you always have that energy. That little piece may have a very historical connection to other things and beings of a certain time frame.

It certainly is a large charm, full of the energy and impulse of the industrial age. Clunky, heavy steel transformed into feathers and the first strains of a celestial melody...





photo by Greg




photo by Greg