NORTH FREEDOM — A local artist, famous for his eccentric sculpture park, is scheduled to appear in an upcoming episode of the popular reality show “American Pickers.”
In July, Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, hosts of the History Channel program, visited the Sauk Prairie area to check out the decades’ worth of objects that Tom Every, better known as Dr. Evermor, has accumulated at his sculpture park along Highway 12.
“The place is really cool and there is some storage there that people never see,” said Cristin Cricco-Powell, a producer for the show. “I think it will make for a really great segment.”
The premise of the show is that Wolfe and Fritz travel the back roads of America exploring old structures for valuable items to sell at their store, Antique Archeology.
Fritz and Wolfe’s voiceover for the show’s opening credits explains: “We’re looking for amazing things buried in people’s garages and barns. What most people see as junk, we see as dollar signs. We’ll buy anything we think we can make a buck on. Each item we pick has a history all its own and the people we meet? Well, they’re a breed all their own.”
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Cricco-Powell said no date has been set for the episode featuring Every, but it likely will be within the next few months. Wolfe and Fritz bought some items at the sculpture park, she said, but declined to say what they were.
For decades, Every was an industrial wrecking and salvage expert, amassing scrap pieces and furniture for use in his sculptures. The pieces are a whimsical mix of science fiction and Victorian-era design.
Eleanor Every, Dr. Evermor’s wife, said she did the negotiating with the show’s hosts, who often were interested in objects that had already been combined into the beginnings of an art piece.
She said they climbed the Forevertron, Every’s massive 320-ton free-standing structure that’s supposed to be a mystical space-traveling machine made from various parts including a decompression chamber from an Apollo space mission. A chair attached to the Forevertron was among the objects they were interested in, she said.
Ultimately, Eleanor Every said she sold Fritz and Wolf more than one piece from the park’s storage trailers.
“It’s not a snatch and grab of how many dollars they can make,” Tom Every said. “I appreciate things the way they are, and so do they.”
This isn’t the first time Every’s park has been featured on national television. Eleanor Every said the park has been on the Discovery Channel and the program “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”
— Eagle contributor Jacob Meister did some reporting for this story.
