Danish artist Thomas Dambo has been on a mission for more than a decade. His goal: get more people to care about how we treat our planet.
"Instead of building a civilization that's drowning in its own trash, that's drowning in its own waste, in its own wealth, basically, we can build our civilization as a circular civilization that just recycles itself into the next," Dambo said.
To get his point across, Dambo creates giant wooden trolls entirely out of trash and recycled materials. Each has their own story, drawing you in, with a wink, a smile, or the tiniest gleam in their eye.
Six of his trolls have wandered to The Wild Center in Tupper Lake this summer as part of his traveling exhibit called TROLLS: Save the Humans. It’s here through October.
That exhibit has been drawing a record number of visitors to the museum, The Wild Center's director of Marketing and Visitor Experience, Nick Gunn said. Crowds have come to the Adirondacks from 50 states and 13 countries.
"This season's been the most successful in the Wild Center's history," Gunn said. "We have seen just in the last 12 weeks more than 160,000 people."
While the six trolls are only temporary visitors, a new troll is making its permanent home in the Adirondacks.
Patrick Sapling is nestled in a little clearing off one of the Wild Center’s trails. He’s kneeling down in the dirt, arms outstretched above his head to the heavens, a sugar maple sapling cradled in his chunky fingers.
The troll’s name comes from American sculptor Patrick Dougherty, Dambo said.
Dougherty’s stick sculptures are famous around the world. Dambo and Dougherty met up just before Dambo’s original visit to the Wild Center, where they discussed how only one or two of his stickworks were still standing.
"The next day me and Alexa and our kids, we go up here to the Wild Center, and then we're walking around in the woods, and all of a sudden I come crawling out from a bush and then boom, it's right there, the last one that Patrick has left," he said.
Dambo took it as a sign.
Adirondack inspiration
Another sign? He was inspired by what he saw during his visit to the Adirondacks.
He discovered what’s a standard feature to most Adirondack hikers: massive erratic boulders plopped throughout the woods left behind by the glaciers.
"Once I had thought about this, then I thought, well, if there are so many boulders that people just get rid of, there surely must also be some place where there is like a big pile of these boulders that people don't need for anything," he said.
So Dambo went rescuing. Now, about 200 boulders surround the troll in his hideaway.
"This is kind of like an ancient ceremonial circle around it with all these stones," Dambo said. "These stones, they become a part of the setting for the sculpture, but they also then become—like, you can sit on them, you can crawl around on them, you can play hide and seek in between them."
Dambo said he imagines how kids and adults will stumble upon the scene, climb all over the rocks, then dig deeper into the meaning.
Not only are the boulders saved from a local excavator’s property, but Patrick’s cedar body is made from scraps harvested from lumber yards around the area.
"I want people on the next layer of it to understand and appreciate all these boulders that are here. Like, maybe instead of paving your home and landscaping with things that you don't have here, there can be so much beauty in these boulders that you already have here," Dambo said. "I want people to understand that you can create the biggest and most beautiful art just of these off-cuts that were going to be woodchips from the mill."
The troll’s steel frame and his sapling also came from local businesses in the North Country.
That makes him a real Adirondacker, the Wild Center’s Nick Gunn said. Gunn said it’s an honor to see the region reflected in Dambo’s art.
"There's a certain sense of whimsy and calm that kind of washes over you when you're down there," he said. "I really hope that that's what people get and that they feel and they understand that this is much about Tupper Lake and the Adirondacks as it is about large trolls."
Patrick Sapling is Dambo’s first permanent troll in New York State. Gunn said that makes sense; they fit together perfectly.
"To listen to Thomas talk about his mission and inspire folks to think differently about the planet, to be better stewards of the Earth, that's exactly what we do," Gunn said. "So to hear him say that is gratifying, and it makes the work that we do on a daily basis feel that much more special."
Patrick is ready and waiting for visitors to find him among the forest of the Wild Center.
While he’s here permanently, his six fellow trolls have only a few more weeks before they move on to their next home, hopefully leaving behind the footprints we all can work to fill.