[Article]
[p. 27]galleria
the land of evermor
By GAIL LAMBERTY
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANN PARKER
Dr. Evermor with the Forevertron, the piece that started it all in 1983. The Forevertron is certified by The Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest scrap metal sculpture, weighing in at four hundred tons, writer Gail Lamberty notes. Says Wisconsin "outsider art" expert Ann Parker: "Evermor is one of the only people in the world who has created not only an environment, but a myth and story about the environment."
A welding torch becomes a magic wand in the hand of outsider/ visionary artist Dr. Evermor. In a former life, Tom Every used that torch to dismantle breweries, cheese factories, warehouses, water towers, woolen mills, and other industrial discards. After decades of demolition, a new persona emerged: Dr. Evermor (Doctor of Delight, with a Ph.D. in Perfectly Happy Diversions, awarded from the University of Experience). Now the salvaged scrap from the Industrial Age forms the fins, feathers, and flesh of fantasy creatures populating his seven-acre art park. The sculpture site on Highway 12 (five miles south of Baraboo, across from the Badger Army Ammunition Plant and behind Delaney's Surplus) was recently recognized by USA Today as No. 3 in the Top Ten U.S. Roadside Attractions and was featured in Fantasy Worlds, an international publication of art environments around the world. You can also catch Dr. Evermor on www.roadsideamerica.com ("Your online guide to offbeat attractions"), which declares: "Oft imitated by 'Outside Art'-wannabes, none have seriously challenged the Doctor's ingenious conglomeration."
Dr. Evermor welcomes visitors personally most weekends from 11 am. to 6 p.m. He is constantly adding to his fantasy park. And serious plans are afoot to have the Forevertron, his pièce de résistance, moved across Highway 12 to the Badger Army Ammunition Plant as a national monument to the munitions workers of America.
Dr. Evermor's Prairie Party
A Merry Prairie Fairy Tale
Alice took tea with a Mad Hatter and a March Hare. Harry Potter traveled on a train from Platform Nine and Three Quarters. But Dr. Evermor plans a tea party and a trip more spectacular than Alice or Harry could ever match.
At the foot of the Baraboo Bluffs, where children of Badger Ordnance workers once played schoolyard games, rises a new playground for the youngsters and the not-so-youngsters of today. The Land of Evermor, a world of myth and magic, fantasy and frolic, invites both the fiercely faithful and the cynically skeptic to the Prairie Party to be scheduled very soon.
Dr. Evermor immigrated to the Wisconsin prairie from Eggington, England, not so long ago. As many newcomers do, he carried his dream not packed in a suitcase but packaged in his head, heart, and hands. His vision to journey back to the heavenly home of his Creator in a time-travel machine will soon become reality. His dream has been transformed into technique and technology, with mechanisms in place and pre-blastoff festivity plans nearly complete.
View of the Over Lord Master Control, (left) and the Forevertron (background, right) which will blast Dr. Evermor up to the heavens after catching lightning.
The mechanical-magic-heavenly-transport machine, the Forevertron, has been built to exacting engineering specifications. The Forevertron's spiral staircase awaits the footsteps of the Good Doctor. He'll cross the bridge and enter the Glass Ball in Copper Egg for his final journey home. The Over Lord Master Control is primed to reach out and catch that one critical lightning flash that will marry celestial electrical energy to Industrial Age innovation. This union will create the magnetic force beam powering the egg capsule to the edge of the universe. In case any onlookers lose their smiles and show a grim face, one of seven cannon birds at the lower level of the Over Lord Master Control will target them for a "Love Laser" blast and leave them wearing a perpetual smile.
The Doctor's ancestral English courtesy inspired him to invite friends to share the great event. Replies from across the globe fill the Butterfly Mail Box daily.
The Butterfly Mail Box attracts butterflies upon butterflies --- the wings are also shaped like butterflies. The butterfly's jaw drops so that mail can actually be delivered (visitors from around the world leave fan mail fairly routinely).
Arachna Artie is a nineteen-foot-tall spider. His legs were once balance beams from scales that were used to weigh trucks. He has eight legs, just like a real spider.
Creatures and critters of whim and whimsy populate the land of Evermor to inspire and assist the Doctor in his work. Cool cats, laughing lizards, barnacle butterflies, flying fish, and sunshade spiders such as Arachna Artie will join the revelry for the Prairie Party. Seven Singing & Dancing Dragons (now under construction) are on the journey to the Land of Evermor and have requested that blastoff be delayed until their arrival late this fall.
[p. 30]Prince Albert and Queen Victoria have reserved the place of honor in the Royal Teahouse atop the east side of the Forevertron. Scads of skeptic scoffers have reserved the Perch for the High Priest of Non Believers attached to the Doubting Thomas Telescope at the west end of the Forevertron. Victorian gazebo teahouses surround the Forevertron for ground-level, front-
The Royal Teahouse is specially reserved for Prince Albert and Queen Victoria. Prince Albert is a spiritual brother to Dr. Evermor as he had an inventive spirit and was interested in the technology of his era. As you would expect, the stairway is formed in the shape of lilypads for the royals' delicate feet.
The Doubting Thomas Telescope is about thirty feet long and made out of brass, copper and steel. It has seven extensions, and monitor controls made of pieces from the Baraboo woolen mill.
row viewing. While reservations are not required, many have already picked their place at the party.
Gracious hospitality will be the order of the day. Popcorn will explode from the Olfactory while gourmet delicacies roasted to perfection will be served from the Epicurean. Desserts created by the Wizard of Wonder will be offered to all.
The Olfactory Popcorn Popper is set inside an elevator cage that bounces around and moves when you pick up your popcorn. There are working popcorn machines inside.
No need to be calorie conscious in the Land of Evermor, because the Gravatron will "de-water" the Doctor just before blastoff to get rid of those extra pounds. All in attendance are invited to join in the calorie cast-off. The waiting line for the Gravatron is already forming. Frolic, fun, food, and friendship are the menu of the Prairie Party.
The Celestial Listening Ear is made out of a speaker from an old theater in Beloit. You can sit behind it to track a trajectory through astrological reference points. The chair is a former dentist's chair. There are two telescopes connected to the celestial listening ear, so that two people can take information from different planets.
The Billabong Bird is made from farm machinery parts that once turned the prairie into crop soil. The Kindschi family provided the parts. The bird was inspired and named by one of the Doctor's cousins, a farmer from New Zealand who recently came to visit.
Glass Ball in Copper Egg. Before the glass ball was incorporated into the space capsule, it was a sign for a Mars Hamburger Stand in Green Bay. The copper egg came from the Parker Pen company in Janesville.
But what party would be complete without music? Music never heard on this earthly realm will serenade the sky. The Bird Band is in rehearsal right now. One hundred and one wind and percussion birds follow the baton of the Director Bird while the Bass Fiddle Birds tower over the trumpet and tuba bird sections.
Doctor Evermor is musing about Prairie Party preparation while waiting for the Seven Singing and Dancing Dragons to arrive from Tibet. The Mad Hatter and Harry Potter have already confirmed their attendance, requesting Teahouse Number Two. You are welcome to visit the Bird Band and other inhabitants in the Land of Evermor before blastoff. In the Land of Evermor, the doors are always open.
The Bird Band has two bass fiddle birds, forty feet tall, which the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore would like to purchase, says Lamberty. For now, Evermore says he will not part with them. The tanks they are made of were once used in therapy for burn and polio patients, Lamberty notes.
Author Gail Lamberty who bears the title "Princess of Power," is the secretary of the Evermor Foundation. She is known as a grassroots rural arts activist. In celebration of Wisconsin's Sesquicentennial, she resurrected Fighting Bob, a play about Belle and Bob La Follette, in a rural antique theater in Prairie du Sac that had not featured a show in seventy-five years. Her involvement with the Doctor's work emerged from a sense of appreciation for a place where folks from ages five to eighty-five consistently walk around wearing smiles and no frowns.
Photographer Ann Parker is an art teacher, printmaker, and photographer based in Baraboo. She has photographed the environments of many self-taught Wisconsin artists (and wrote the piece on outsider art in the summer issue of the Wisconsin Academy Review). She is completing a book on visionary artists in Wisconsin that is slated for publication later this year.
University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center