Thoughts from a Rhode Island PBS producer as he watches the Recycled Artist and his team bring the Trolls to life.
I’m sitting in the back of a golf cart, zipping through Ninigret Park in Charlestown, Rhode Island. At the wheel is world-renowned recycling artist, activist, and troll builder Thomas Dambo. Next to me is one of his lead builders, Balder. These two Danes are both at least eight inches taller than me. I feel like a hobbit trying to film a Fellowship of the Ring documentary.
We are heading to a secret location in the park where Dumbo and his team are building one of his world famous trolls, Greta Granite. When we arrive at the secret location, it is just a hollowed out circle surrounded by leafless trees, with a few leaves peeking out, a sign of spring.
Thomas looked around for a moment, then sat cross-legged on the ground. He closed his eyes and started shifting positions. I think he was trying to figure out how Greta should sit. So I asked,
“I’m figuring out exactly how high this should be, how much it should cover. If the troll steps back too far, the necklace will fall down to her knees,” he says. “So I’m figuring out exactly where all of this should be placed.”
It’s two parts physics and two parts imagination, something I experienced during the three weeks that Dambo and his team spent building the two trolls now seen in Ninigret Park. More trolls are on the way in Rhode Island, but for now, “Greta Granite” and “Eric Rock” are the first trolls in the Ocean State.
“I love big rocks. In Denmark we don’t have any big bedrock, we don’t have any big stones sticking out of the ground,” Dambo explained to me as he pointed to the rocks around Greta, “so I thought they would be a good basis for a fairy tale.”
We piled back into the golf cart and headed to our first location, where “Eric Rock” was being built, in a more prominent part of the park, very close to the Frosty Drew Observatory. Thomas asked if he could get his camera out so he could tell us what happened to the wood used for Eric.
“Those two things are very important to me, so I wanted to explain them,” he says, walking towards the troll he’s working on. “I don’t judge my sculptures by their appearance. I’m a recycled art activist, so it’s very important to me that they’re made from recycled wood. As you can see, this is wood straight off the shelves at the lumber yard.”
Apparently, the first piece of wood that Dambo and his team received was brand new, but it was meant to be recycled. They solved that problem and found recycled wood to use for the rest of the construction, which gets to the heart of the purpose of Dambo’s work.
“A sculpture might look really beautiful, but if it’s only partially made from recycled wood, it undermines my integrity as a recycled artist and it really pisses me off,” he says.
I visited Dumbo and his team and filmed their progress over the course of three weeks as they made Greta and Eric. It’s really a pleasure to be able to spend so much time on the story.
As his work has grown in popularity, Dumbo’s schedule has grown ever-increasing: between calls with reporters, researching sites for future projects, filming for his YouTube channel, preparing speaking engagements, and spending time with his wife, Alexa, and their two-year-old twin sons, making these Trolls is the thing that takes up the least amount of time for Dumbo.
“I love making things, so I started making things that were really labor intensive to make,” Dambo says. “It’s a feeling that’s been going back to when I was eight or nine and building tree houses and digging underground caves and putting zip lines through the woods. I can only make things half the time.”
Dumbo feels fortunate to have formed long-lasting partnerships with his leader-builders, Bader, Julian and Jacob, who carry out Dumbo’s plans and visions for each Troll, allowing him to fulfill his duties as Thomas Dumbo.
This article is a production of the New England News Collaborative. Originally published on Rhode Island PBS.