A Mythic Obsession: The World of Dr. Evermor

By Tom Kupsh

In addition to hundreds of whimsical welded sculptures, Tom Every poured most of his effort into the Forevertron, the world’s largest sculpture built by a single person, and in the process, he discovered his alter ego: Dr. Evermor. With the full participation of Tom and Eleanor Every, Every’s amazing life is keenly documented, including never published family photos, sketches, and personal memories, producing a detailed portrait of a unique self-taught artist. From a very early age, Every collected, modified, and resold cast-off industrial material. His work as a salvager led him to Alex Jordan Jr., creator of the House on the Rock. When the time is right (and only Dr. Evermor will know when) the famous, enigmatic scientist will climb the winding staircase of the Forevertron and enter its egg-shaped travel chamber, power up the dynamos and flip on the thrusters, and fly away on a “highball to heaven,” propelled by an electromagnetic lighting force beam. Or so the story goes. Anyone who has spent time at the elaborate visionary environment created by Tom Every has heard some variation of the Evermor myth. Lesser known is the story behind the story, the fascinating history of this one-of-a-kind creative spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781569764602

Book preview

The Forevertron stands poised in a Wisconsin field. When the time is right—only Dr. Evermor will know when—the famous, enigmatic scientist will climb the winding staircase and enter its egg-shaped travel chamber, power up the dynamos and flip on the thrusters, and away he’ll fly on a highball to heaven, propelled by an electromagnetic lightning force beam.

Or so the story goes.

Anyone who’s visited the elaborate visionary environment created by Tom Every has heard some variation of the Evermor myth. But few know the story behind the story, the fascinating history of this one-of-a-kind creative spirit. From a very early age Every collected, modified, and resold cast-off industrial material. His work as a salvager led him to Alex Jordan Jr., creator of the House on the Rock, where he collaborated with Jordan on many of the attraction’s most elaborate displays. After the two parted ways, Every began to explore his own artistic voice. In addition to hundreds of whimsical welded sculptures, he poured most of his effort into the Forevertron, the world’s largest sculpture built by a single person. In the process, Every discovered his alter ego: Dr. Evermor.

Author Tom Kupsh, with the full participation of Tom and Eleanor Every, has keenly documented Every’s amazing life, including previously unpublished family photos, sketches, and personal memories. What emerges is a detailed portrait of a unique, self-taught artist.

Photo: Lisa Lair-Kupsh

Tom Kupsh originally met Tom Every in the 1970s, and they reestablished their friendship years later. He is the former creative director for House on the Rock and lives in southern Wisconsin.

JACKET DESIGN: SCOTT RATTRAY

JACKET PHOTO: RON GORDON

PRINTED I N THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kupsh, Tom.

A mythic obsession : the world of Dr. Evermor/Tom Kupsh.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-55652-760-9

1. Dr. Evermor, 1938—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Junk sculpture—United States 3. Metal sculpture—United States. I. Dr. Evermor, 1938- II. Title.

NB237.D69K87 2008

730.92—dc22

2007048062

Interior design: Scott Rattray

© 2008 by Tom Kupsh

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN: 978-1-55652-760-9

Printed in the United States of America

5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1 The Child Is Father of the Man: Background and Early Life

2 The Search for Artistic Voice: Opportunity and Trouble

3 The Myth: Escape into Fantasy and Creativity

4 The Forevertron: The Myth in Iron

5 The Bird Band: Whimsical Fantasy

6 The Middle Works: From the Heart and Other Places

7 The Mirror Eye: The Trickster’s Scheme

8 The Dreamkeepers: Dream and Fantasy Meet Reality

9 The Rolling Atelier:The Evermor Circle

10 The Twenty-Eight Intergalactic Meditation Points: Mystery, Poetry, and Steel

11 Alien Visitors: Looking Out

12 Rhymes, Riddles, and Not Necessarily Coded Messages

Conclusion

Endnotes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah.

It makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.

—Rumi

Preface

Visionary artist Tom Every—Dr. Evermor—is known throughout the world for his rare vision. His sculpture, especially his Forevertron environment, has been featured in countless magazine and newspaper articles in the United States and abroad. Local, regional, national, and international film and television crews have visited his sculpture site over the years, and thousands of people from all walks of life come to see him and his work each year. He is somewhat of a celebrity in the world of self-taught artists and has earned the respect of scholars and collectors who eagerly seek him out.

All of the writing and reporting about Tom and his work falls into three categories: First, what I call weekend-getaway pieces, which appear in local and regional newspapers, on television, or in guidebooks. These are of uneven quality, and sometimes the research is scant or incomplete and often filled with misconceptions. Second, more serious reporting about Tom and his work does occasionally appear in the form of feature articles found in nonart magazines and art sections of newspapers. Some of this material is well researched and well written. Third, there are a growing number of serious and scholarly pieces in publications that focus on outsider art; these works are well researched and carefully written and some are cited in the bibliography of this book.

Missing from all of these is the broader narrative of who Tom Every—Dr. Evermor—is and how his work came into being. I knew Tom in the 1970s when he was still formulating his artistic voice and working as a builder and salvager. After 1982, our paths went different ways, but I occasionally wondered what had become of him. I heard that he was making weird metal sculptures near Baraboo, Wisconsin, and in the fall of 2004, on an impulse, I drove up to where I thought his sculpture site might be. I finally found him, not the robust hellion I had known but a semi-ambulatory stroke victim full of pain and barely able to use his left side. I also found him surrounded by a body of extraordinary work. Soon it became clear that despite his physical limitations he was full of passion for his art, and his memory and imagination were sharp and bright. I knew in those first few visits that I had found the writing project I had been looking for.

Tom was enthusiastic about this project, and in fall 2004 I began to visit with Tom and his longtime wife, Eleanor, and record our conversations. The hundreds of pages of transcripts that resulted from our conversations, and from visits with his family, friends, and helpers, are the primary source for the information in this book. Tom and Eleanor also shared with me some family records, photographs, documents, and print articles from their archives and gave me access to Tom’s sculpture and drawings as well as lists of contacts they felt would be useful.

The goal of this book is to allow Tom’s voice, and the voices of those who have been close to him, to tell the story of his life and art. This is not a definitive biography but rather a narrative history of his process; those searching for further details will find the endnotes and bibliography useful. This book is a celebration, not an exposé, and those looking for stories of misbehavior will be disappointed—mostly. They will find that the notes may lead them where they want to go.

Ultimately, Tom Every’s art will be the most articulate voice heard here. To ensure that the voice of the work is clear and powerful, I partnered with art photographer Jim Wildeman, whose photographs document Tom’s work. Jim also has included snapshots and collected photographs from the Every family collection.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the many folks without whom this book would never have been possible, particularly Tom and Eleanor Every, who talked freely about their life and art and also shared with me many family photos and records. Special thanks to Bobbi Lane, Silke Tudor, Doris Litscher Gasser, Aaron Howard, Ron Gordon, and Ann Parker for the use of their photographs.

I want also to thank everyone who talked with me about Dr. Evermor and his work, especially Karin Shoemaker, Erika Koivunen, Aaron Howard, Jake Furnald, Homer Deahn, Richard Springer, Ann Parker, Pete Burno, Jim Wildeman, Don Warren, Curt Meine, Roman Slotty, Barbara Banks for her e-mails, Dr. Gary Maier, Kim Knuth, Ray Blackburn, Doug Britton, Larry Waller, Dan Woolpert, Dee Hanson, John Greene, Petra Backonja for her interview and poetry, Dr. Misha Backonja, Nobuyoshi Kitamura, and all of Tom and Eleanor’s many friends who encouraged this project.

Thanks to Thayer Every for many things and especially for operating the crane that lifted Jim Wildeman high above the sculpture park for his great photographs (and set him down again). Thanks to Jerome Pohlen at Chicago Review Press for all his suggestions and help.

Thanks to the most patient woman in the world, my wife, Lisa Anne Lair-Kupsh.

1

The Child Is Father of the Man

¹

Background and Early Life

By the close of the nineteenth century, Captain Oswald Every had retired from a distinguished military career as a decorated officer and veteran of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny and had been, for a time, the governor of the British prison in Gibraltar. He expected to settle into a pleasant retirement in the English countryside, but the captain was distracted; his son Edward had long since come of age but remained a constant worry. He had done his best to send Edward to the finest schools in England and Spain. He surely was bright enough and fluent in several languages.² But all the education seemed of little use. Edward’s lack of progress in business, and his other behaviors, troubled the captain. Drawing on his meager knowledge of him (Edward died in 1928), Tom Every ventures, I think he was drinking whiskey and chasing women, and that’s what I think he was doing. He was a rowdy, that’s what he was.³ Family history might have given the captain further cause for worry. Two hundred years before, a distant relative, Henry Every (Avery), had given up legitimate trade and had become a well-known pirate holed up on the island of Madagascar. The arch-pirate, as he was known, would later be lionized in the stage production of Charles Johnson’s play The Successful Pirate.⁴ Henry Every also inspired a fictional tale of piracy in Daniel Defoe’s novel King of the Pyrates in 1719.⁵ Tom holds the pirate Henry Every in fond regard, thinking himself cut from the same cloth; he even went so far as to name his truck the Fancy after the arch-pirate’s ship.

Captain Oswald Every came up with a then-common solution to his problem— soon Edward was on a ship with one thousand dollars in his pocket and two hunting guns in his baggage. The plan was for him to become a gentleman farmer in America, but that’s the last his family ever saw of him. This kind of situation was not uncommon in the 1800s. Mark Twain, writing at this same time, explains:

Dissipated ne’er-do-wells belonging to important families in England and Canada were not cast off by their people while there was any hope of reforming them, but when that last hope perished at last, the ne’er-do-well was sent abroad to get him out of the way.⁶

Whether Edward (Ted) was a dissipated ne’er-do-well or not is hard to say; he seems to have been on good behavior in his new home, where he soon traded one of the hand-tooled shotguns for a buggy worth only ten dollars. Tom says, He was never very good with money or business. He soon found he could not keep himself in the lifestyle that he was used to in England, and his dreams of a life of estate management and leisure faded away. We next hear of him in Wisconsin, where he met and fell in love with Adeline Smith, a schoolteacher and a dedicated Christian Scientist whose Yankee English family had moved to Wisconsin in the 1870s from Springfield, Massachusetts. Ted and Adeline were married in August 1902 and settled in Brooklyn, Wisconsin. I never heard of him doing any drinking over here, recalls Tom. In Brooklyn, he was industrious, working as a butter maker in the Brooklyn Creamery—where after hours he could be found taking baths in the cheese vats—and later as a clerk in the local mercantile, where he could be heard crowing loudly whenever an embarrassed young lady asked for Rooster brand toilet paper. He was a well-liked character around town; he was the only person in the area with an English accent and was, according to Tom, laid back and would sit on the porch and smoke cigars.⁷

The Everys come from an old English family who took their name from their place of origin in France. The older form of the family name is Yvery, or Ivry. They are proud of their Norman origins and claim that their forebearers arrived in England at the time of William the Conqueror in 1066 and settled in the Midlands, where they lived and prospered over the centuries, finding favor with the royal court through the era of the Tudors. The family managed to survive the upheavals of the English civil war and the political intrigues that followed and kept possession of their titles and estates near Egginton, where Tom and his sister Barbara have visited their present-day relatives.

The Every coat of arms contains the Latin motto Suum Cuique, which translates as to each his own. These days it could be translated as do your own thing, a motto that would be lived up to in its fullest in the person of Tom Every.⁸

Ted and Adeline Every had three sons: Edward Malcolm in 1903, Roderick Desmond in 1904, and Donovan Richmond in 1911. Tom’s dad, Malcolm (Mac), grew up in Brooklyn and early on showed an interest in tinkering. As a boy he had a 1908 one-cylinder car in which he clanged up and down the streets delivering newspapers. He gravitated to Graves Machine Shop, where he spent his spare time fixing his motorcycle or working on his Model T race car in which he sped around town. Mac was a smart and self-conscious young man and did well in school, and when it was time to go off to college he chose the University of Wisconsin at Platteville. He told Tom that he chose Platteville because the dress code was not as tough as the code at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and he didn’t have a lot of money. He made his way through the first two years there attending classes during the day and sleeping in the warm powerhouse, where he had a part-time job watching the boiler gauges, at night.

After two years in Platteville, he transferred to the university in Madison, where he pursued a degree in civil engineering. After graduation, he took a job with the state, where he spent his working life making his way up through the ranks and ending up as the chief of engineering services for the State of Wisconsin. During his career, he was responsible for the layout of state highways.

In 1934 Malcolm married Clarice Doane. The Doanes trace their ancestry right back to the Mayflower. The family advanced in the New World as industrialists and builders. Clarice worked as a secretary in the office of Farmers Mutual Insurance Company when there were only six people in the office; the company would later grow much larger under the name American Family Insurance. In later years, when the children were of school age, she worked as a bank secretary in Brooklyn.

Thomas Owen Every was born in Madison on September 20, 1938, and even as a small child he was a natural-born forager and loved to play near the local bus barn (although this was strictly forbidden) because it was, in his words, where you could find the really good stuff. Whether on the Indian trails along the lake or at the dump, a boy could fuel his imagination of the east side, the industrial side, of wartime Madison.

Tom with his parents EVERY COLLECTION

Tom recalls the smell of stale beer from the Union House Tavern owned by his next-door neighbors, the Essers. The tavern served the air force fliers from nearby Truax Field. On weekends he was often invited to come along for a ride in the country in the back of the Essers’ black DeSoto with their daughter Betty Jo.

More than fifty years later Tom would be made uncomfortable by a woman intently looking at him in the sculpture park, so he asked her if there was something that he could do for her. She introduced herself as Betty Jo Esser and reminded him that she was