Trolls artist shares story behind Dix Park creatures
Tell me more about these trolls
I mean I love them
I'm watching them get built right now at Dick's Park
What what's the what's the whole origin story It's a
it's a story of a family that lives here in
the forest and Dick's Park and they are here to
protect a big old tree called the grandmother tree
Um and there's 5 here in Dick's Park and there's
1 in Charlotte and 1 in High Point
And uh my name is Thomas Dembo
I'm a recycled troll sculpture artist out of Denmark uh
and uh
I've built these ones over the last decade
I've built 100 and now 71 of these cultures in
uh 23 countries and I think now including North Carolina
23 states in the United States as well
I have 500 volunteers in Diggs Park helping me create
the 5 here over the last 3 weeks
And then on Monday we're moving to High Point and
Charlotte to build the next 2 and probably joining with
another couple of volunteers
It's uh I think I've had somewhere between 2050 and
35,000 volunteers over the last decade who helped me create
these out of thousands and thousands and thousands of tons
of scrap wood
Um here in in Diggs Park we're using
Some 15 pallets of bourbon barrel staves from bourbon barrels
that had broken and falling apart
We've used them to create 700 I haven't measured it
yet because it's being built as we speak but something
like a 700 long feet tail that runs from the
daughters that's dancing over here and then into where her
Mother is sleeping inside the forest over here
The mother is gigantic and is in there
Then we're using two old barns old pallets uh 1
mile old fence that's been taken down and a bunch
of branches for the hair of the trolls from the
compost pile in the from from Dick's Park over here
Uh because the message of my art it is that
we can instead of be drowning in our own trash
And in our own success as a human species we
can take all that trash and then we can use
it to create big and beautiful things and that is
what I'm trying to do here with all these volunteers
We estimate that we now have 4 million people annually
that go out to see these sculptures that are built
from trash and I think that's just beautiful and that's
why I do it
So you have books too right Yeah I have my
book here
I want to see the book
Yeah my book is called Thomas Tambo Trash Trolls and
Treasure Hunts because I built trolls from trash and then
I put them on a big treasure hunt and you
can find them all on my map called Thomasample.com/trollmap
You can see all the ones I built all over
the world
And then I always in my interview with saying please
remember that now there are so many millions of people
who go to find my trolls out and about in
the forest around the world
So remember that if we all pick up litter after
each other there will be no litter at all
So please be a good troll hunter and help me
keep the forests
I love that
Can you tell me about how many trolls we're gonna
have out here There's going to be 5 trolls in
Dick's Park 1 in Charlotte and 1 in High Park
And people can they can come out and see them
and they can explore and walk around and they're gonna
look for the grandmother tree
I like the grandmother like so I used to be
a rapper so I always write poems for my trolls
and the poem for this one it is like this
Between these 20 lines of rhyme you'll need to meet
some characters
7 trolls a big old tree and then you you
are the narrator
First the troll is a mother and a father and
their 5 links
They grew up in a forest somewhere under the horizon
and then second is the grandmother a mighty ancient tree
the beacon of the forest without her they all grow
aimlessly and then the third is you
Your name is written in the caption
You're the center of the action and you decide what's
next to happen
But there is one species that all trolls have learned
to fear through evolution
They are invasive like pollution
You must never trust a human because a human will
seek the oldest tree to kill and cut it down
and chop it up in tiny pieces just
Burn it in their tongues
So to protect her the troll had cast a spell
and enchanted the grandmother tree so no humans can find
her because now she looks like any other tree
But every time the moon is dark and the red
wolves howl and bark
That marks the spark that is the start for the
trolls to search the part where they go is secret
You can come if you can keep it
Swear to never speak it eat it and never to
repeat it
One troll is in High Park 1 in Charlotte 5
in Dick's Park
There are 7 secret symbols and all the troll map
you must start
Now that's a treasure hunt there
I mean that's that's a whole hunt
What about the other locations that you have to have
Like tell me about the other around the world like
where are these trolls What other countries So if we
start from the east to west we have Chongqing in
China
We have uh
In Pyongyang in South Korea we have Mandarin Perth in
Western Australia
We have um An island in Singapore that I can't
remember what it's called right now
And we have um Belgium France Luxembourg Germany Denmark England
Northern Ireland Puerto Rico Chile
Mexico 23 American states and I think that's was that
23 countries I wasn't counting but I'll give it to
you
I think it's close
That's a lot of places
How did How did you keep evolving this I mean
did it just go it just snowballed like you just
started doing it in one place and you're like Oh
let's do another place
When I was a musician I learned that every time
you go out and play a concert you get booked
for another concert
So we knew that the day we played our last
concert we wouldn't get booked if we stopped playing we
would also stop being booked
So I just applied that mentality to building trolls around
the world
We just kept building another one
So the first one I just built it didn't get
paid for it
Next one got paid $50
Then the next time it was $100 and then it
just kept going up and up and up and up
and up until now it's like a lot of money
and that's great
So where's the first troll the first troll you ever
built Where is it That was
Close to my home in Denmark
I was wondering if you built one like and then
it was at your house and like you just keep
your own
Do you have any trolls at your house No because
I used to make um graffiti and street art
So it was kind of like for me this was
like an evolution of being a street artist hiding like
unauthorized hiding my at that time it was like birdhouses
Um OK so I still have but because I've always
been into recycling
So when I was a birdhouse street artist I made
thousands and thousands of bird houses I made this logo
that's like the recycle um yeah recycled MCs birdhouse logo
yeah
So that's how it kind of started
Why trolls What about trolls that are so special Um
trolls they have a lot of stories about trolls in
Denmark
Um and there was a cassette tape of a little
troll girl that was protecting the forest that I always
borrowed on the public library library when I was a
kid
So once I worked on this factory and I saw
like this mountain of trash out the back when I
was building these birdhouses
Um and then I thought like it could be pretty
cool if I could take this mountain of trash scrap
wood from pallets and cargo boxes and stuff and then
turn it into an army of trolls and then put
that army of trolls in the forest where this mountain
of scrap wood came from like
Forest in China forest in Canada forest in Mexico where
all these pallets were produced shipped thanks to Denmark and
then have that army of trolls who have a message
of protecting those same forests that they were built from
and now standing in
So it's kind of like it was like all of
those things that came together and and formed it and
that's now 11 years ago