TUPPER LAKE — Tuesday was a very special day at the Wild Center.
A fleet of delivery trucks arrived carrying the six massive trolls that will headline the museum’s 20th anniversary summer season. Installation is set to continue throughout this week, with a member-only opening slated for Sunday and a general opening on Monday.
“Now we’re ready for showtime because we’ve been talking about it for so long,” said Nick Gunn, the museum’s marketing and visitor experience director. “So to see the trucks finally arrive is really gratifying. It was really exciting.”
Thomas Dambo’s “TROLLS: Save the Humans,” is a larger-than-life exhibition — some of the trolls are up to 20 feet in height — that follows six young trolls as they travel around and help humans rediscover their connection to nature.
The trolls, each with their own backstories and personalities, are primarily made out of damaged pallet wood that likely would have otherwise been burned or scrapped. Repurposing the material and the larger story the work shows aligned perfectly with The Wild Center’s mission, Gunn said.
“These trolls may look playful, but their message is serious — and timely,” Wild Center Executive Director Stephanie Ratcliffe said in a statement. “Through Thomas Dambo’s art, we hope visitors of all ages will rediscover their sense of wonder and understand the powerful connection between creativity, sustainability and protecting the natural world.”
Dambo sought to craft giant trolls with an environmental call, telling an evolved story of listening and tending to nature. It further builds on the Nordic-inspired tales — Dambo is a Danish sculpture artist — and artist-made poems relating to a family of larger-than-life trolls he’s built around the world. Those can be found elsewhere in the U.S., Denmark, France, Germany, China, South Korea and Chile.
“Every time I built one, I would get invited to come to a new place,” Dambo said in an interview with the Wild Center. “Now I’m on 23 countries, 22 states on the continental U.S. and I’ve built 171 sculptures.”
Dambo said he loved dumpster diving as a kid, and built treehouses and other creative works out of materials his neighbors were throwing away. That evolved into a career in sustainability sculpting. He said the trolls are meant to create both an awesome immediate experience and carry an even larger message.
“I want people to have that wonder,” he said. “I want people to find them when nobody else is around. I want them to enjoy that moment. I also want them to, when they’re searching for it, to see all the beauty that is in nature and I want them to understand that this sculpture, this big monument, is made of trash — because I think we should be more resourceful and not be so wasteful. I hope that these giant sculptures can be a lesson where people can see the possibilities of what we can create from our trash.”
The Wild Center began the process of booking a slot for this particular exhibition in 2022 and was originally told the earliest availability was 2030 — before this slot opened two years ago. When given the opportunity to move up, Gunn said the museum instantly pounced, and it was all the more special that it coincided with the center’s 20th anniversary.
The public reaction has been ecstatic, he said, with website traffic up 3,000% from what The Wild Center sees in a typical year over the last few months.
“Social media visits are off the charts,” he said. “Everything portends for a really good, busy summer.”
Gunn found Tupper Lake’s and the Tri-Lakes’ enthusiasm to be one of the coolest things in the summer lead-up.
“We hosted four community information sessions around the Tri-Lakes. Each of them brought out 50 to 100 locals,” he said. “We’ve got twice as many volunteers this year than in years’ past. Local businesses are helping out. … Seeing people coming together and rallying is really great.”
Presale tickets have already been purchased from as far away as Florida and Ohio, and Gunn said it was a nice spread across the whole summer and that there’s been a strong contingent of Canadian visitors in those.
“We’re going to see people from all 50 states and a lot of Canada,” he said. “The interest in these things cannot be understated.”
The installation is being performed by Imagine, a company that specializes in museum exhibit and visitor experience projects. Gunn said the company has moved the “TROLLS: Save the Humans,” exhibit to and from other locations, and are well accustomed to such a niche job.
The team started with the more difficult locations, in case extra time was needed. On Tuesday, they set up Kamma Can, who will spend the summer at the base of the Raquette River Roll trail at the base of the museum’s property.
The troll had to be loaded on to the telehandler and driven from the parking lot, down Hosley Ave. and then down an approximately quarter-mile access path.
“They’ll pop the arms in, put the head on and then we’ll get to do our thing,” Gunn said. “We created a lot of interpretive signage that will go alongside trolls so the sustainability story that we’re doing here at the Wild Center will become evident.”
The trolls are set to remain on display until Oct. 31. Given the popularity of the traveling exhibit, Gunn said the Wild Center is planning and fundraising to hopefully work with Dambo on creating a permanent troll-related exhibit after this summer.
“I feel really happy to be invited to the Wild Center and create one of my works here,” Dambo said. “I feel like the values that the Wild Center has and the values of my art and my exhibition, ‘Save the Humans,’ they overlap perfectly. I’m really excited for the upcoming exhibition.”