Thomas Owen Every was born Sept 20th in 1938 in Madison Wisconsin.
He was kind of a kid bootlegger. He liked to tinker with cars. He could fix about anything he set his mind to. He lived in a world of his wild imagination and he could draw you in with his whimsy. He drove a souped up Ford Coupe. He made a good living salvaging anything and everything that others did not want. He was a junk picker. Your trash was most definitely his treasure. His imagination was extensive. He saw everything on a grand scale. There was nothing he couldn’t tackle. When he started a project, he just started it, and felt his way through it. It was as if he was the creative force that the Universe has misplaced, and time had forgotten. He didn’t plan it all out in advance. He just dove in head, torso and feet first. The plunge was deep, and he didn’t emerge until it was complete.
He didn’t walk through life on a straight line. He wandered through the back alleys and dumpsters. He was a dumpster pirate. He found treasures everywhere he looked. He could turn a piece of rubbish into a sculpture that would turn heads and hearts. People oooo’d and ahhhh’d over his work. For a normal human it would have been torture, to him, it was his pleasure and his obsession. He started his days around 10 AM and worked until the wee hours of the morning. He would often be found leaning against a piece in process, his arms stretched about it, his body collapsed in exhaustion as if he had melted from the heat of the blow torch.
He had a vision. He had a myth in his mind that manifested in every piece of his art. He thought he could create lightening on earth and ride it up to a God in the Heavens. He didn’t live in the realm of reason and logic, but rather in one of fantasy and humor. There was no timeline he followed, there was no deadline, no rules and certainly no regulations. He was an artistic gangster, a natural forager, a gentleman farmer, an absent-minded lover of fantastical worlds that he created right here on earth.
He was a natural born wheeler and a dealer. He could ping-pong back and forth with the best of them. He almost always got what he wanted at the price he was willing to pay. He knew to start low and he would slowly give, inch by inch until the other party felt they were getting a good deal, and he was always well within the range he was originally willing to pay. It was an art more than it was a science. He was also a natural collaborator. He would relish in taking other, less skilled artists, sculptures and welders under his tutelage. Anyone who had the good fortune of working with him would be transformed forever. Their eyes would be opened to a whole different perspective on life, and they would never see the world the same again.
As a small boy he pulled his red radio flyer wagon around town scavenging for anything that caught his fancy. He would bolt out the front door, the slap of the screen door behind him was all that you heard, not a word of when he might be back home. From a young age he lived an extraordinary and uncommon life. His coat of arms was SUUM CUIQUE, to each his own, do your own thing. He was motivated by his passion and also by the challenges that he faced. He made his escape into his own mythical world of his creativity. It served him well and it enriched the lives of everyone he came in contact with.
The Lama Writings 