With the announcement of a second giant wooden troll coming to Colorado, Denver7 decided to go straight to the artistic source to learn more about the soon-to-be sculpture, the inspiration, the process, and more. Artist Thomas Dambo, the man behind the trolls, chatted with anchor Jason Gruenauer over Zoom, starting with some mystery.
“It’s a secret. Wait and see what it’s called,” Dambo said about the to-be-built Teller County troll.
Dambo is currently on a troll-building road trip in Michigan, with his next stop in Colorado. We do know that the troll will be built somewhere in the Cripple Creek or Victor area, between July 27th and August 4th.
“Get ready for your troll hunt,” he said.
That troll will be the artist’s 118th overall. And while the details of Colorado’s second troll are few and far between, Dambo did describe his process.
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“In my workshop and my studio in Denmark, we build the heads,” he said, explaining that once that is shipped to the site, construction work can begin. “We then build the whole sculpture around it. It’s one piece of wood cut at a time with a jigsaw. And then it's 1000s of pieces in the end.”
The majority of his pieces are made entirely of wood, and with the work of his crew and volunteers, each troll takes about 1,000 hours to complete. As far as why his work is so popular, he credits a combination of things.
“It gives people a sense that it's okay to be playful and it reminds them of being children. And it gives them a bit of adventure to go out and explore. And also it creates new destinations,” he explained, adding that people enjoy the hikes as they ‘hunt’ to ‘collect’ multiple trolls.
In that vein, Dambo has put an interactive map on his website, with descriptions and photos of his work across the world. That can be found at trollmap.com.
"We want a purpose and a direction. So the trolls, they give people direction to to go on all these different hikes," he said.
Denver7 will bring you updates on the Teller troll as soon as construction begins.