Tom Every

Tom Every, also known as Dr. Evermor, was born in Brooklyn, Wisconsin. When he was a young child, his family was focused on collecting scraps for the war effort, which heavily influenced his life’s work. By age eleven, Every founded the Brooklyn Salvage Company. In 1964, he formed the Wisconsin By-Products Corporation in Stoughton, Wisconsin, and married Eleanore Grittholm (also known as Lady Eleanore Every). They divorced in 1997, but never separated. For the next twenty years, Every supervised the wrecking of more than 350 industrial sites across the country. In 1984, retired from the industrial wrecking industry, Every used his collection of scrap metal to begin building his sculpture park in North Freedom, Wisconsin.  This is also when he developed the persona of Dr. Evermor, Every’s alter ego.

At the center of the Every’s sculpture park is the “Forevertron”. Described by Every as a “soul-transformation device,” the Forevertron is a massive outdoor sculpture estimated to weigh over three hundred tons. The towering sculpture incorporates materials recovered in the course of Every’s wrecking and scrapping jobs, including deaccessioned pieces from the Henry Ford Museum, elements from NASA’s Apollo program, and parts of 1920s power houses. Surrounding the Forevertron are dozens of satellite sculptures made from scrap, including what Every calls “The Bird Band Orchestra,” which includes seventy individual sculptures. Due to health constraints, Every is a full-time resident in Madison, Wisconsin, while Lady Eleanore Every runs the sculpture park.

In 1999, the nonprofit Evermor Foundation was established to ensure the park’s maintenance. Every has work in the American Visionary Art Museum (Baltimore, Maryland), and his work was included in the John Michael Kohler Arts Center exhibition Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds: Built Environments of Vernacular Artists (2007.) Kohler Foundation Inc. gifted two sculptures to the Arts Center in 2006, and in 2012, two additional sculptures were gifted to the Arts Center by Muffin Aushuler and Mark Nemschoff in honor of Jean and Leonard Nemschoff.