In the Summer and Fall of 2025, while walking around the grounds of Filoli, a National Trust Historic Site in California, visitors are likely to come across something magical: six enormous creatures, nestled among the trees and flowers of the site’s lush grounds. One of these beings tends to a flower bed growing out of a sports car, while another stands draped in garlands made of brightly-colored trash, and a third lies with its ear pressed to the earth, watchful and waiting.

These larger-than-life sculptures, made from scrap wood and other small bits of trash, were created by artist Thomas Dambo, whose enormous trolls, made almost entirely from recycled materials, can be found all over the world.

The trolls at Filoli are part of the traveling exhibit “Trolls: Save the Human,” and they have a special story to tell. Much like their temporary home on Filoli’s 654 acres, these charming creatures want to remind visitors to honor and appreciate nature–before it’s too late.

“The sculptures represent a rebellious young group of artistic trolls that believe in the good in the world and are trying to educate the humans to save it,” Dambo explains.

Each troll has a unique personality and perspective. There’s Ibbi Pip, who loves birds and surrounds herself with birdhouses, hoping to inspire humans to think about who they share the world with. There’s Kamma Kan, a creative spirit who wants to show people how they can turn trash into art. And there’s Ronja Redeye, who shares stories, poems, and songs about nature.

The construction of the sculptures themselves reflects Dambo’s commitment to telling stories about recycling. “Why empty a mountain if you can just empty and clean up a landfill instead?” he says, voicing an opinion that his idealistic trolls would most certainly agree with.

I recently sat down to speak with him about his artistic background, his lifelong love of dumpster diving, and what he hopes his trolls can teach all of us.

Tell me about yourself and your background. What led you to become a recycle artist and sculptor?

From a young age I always loved to dumpster dive. When someone on my street moved, or someone had water damage in their basement, I loved jumping into the dumpsters and going through every single thing they had thrown out. Sometimes adults would see me and say, “Hey, get out of our dump, you can't do that!” and I had a hard time understanding why I couldn’t take these things that people didn't want anymore.

At the same time, I liked to build stuff, usually from materials I found in the dumpster. I built a box for my brother's pacifier when I was six or seven, made with an old piano hinge and some small nails. That was probably one of the first things I ever built.

I built treetop houses, and a cabin in the woods, and I dug big caves with a shovel in my backyard.

As a teenager, my friends and I got into hip-hop, but I kept building things. I built my own music speakers, and when we would go to music festivals, I would build our camp. Even when I started making my own music and graffiti art, I just kept building and building.

Eventually, I started making birdhouses out of recycled materials, and that led me on the track to do these giant recycled sculptures that I do now.

What inspired the Trolls project?

My birdhouses were inspired by graffiti–they were very geometrical and brightly colored. As time went on, I started building bigger and bigger sculptural birdhouses. But I still wanted to use recycled materials, and it’s hard to dumpster dive for things like paint and clean wood. So I thought, how can I design an aesthetic language out of the type of wooden scraps that I can find in my own trash can?

I started doing experiments with just small scrap boards. I realized that the aesthetic of the sculpture that I'm creating had to be based on small, non-painted pieces of wood that came in different shapes, and that had holes and scratches.

I didn’t start calling my sculptures giants or trolls right away. But soon I realized they should be trolls because trolls are a big part of the heritage where I come from. And because they’re protectors of the natural world, I could use them to tell stories about recycling.

Was there anything unique about the experience of creating a traveling exhibition, like the one at Filoli?

Almost all of my work is site specific. A troll might be wrapped around a tree or sitting with its legs into a lake. Often, the individual pieces have to be carried into the site because there are no roads and a truck can’t come in. This makes them extremely specific to the site and completely impossible to move. That's one of the trademarks for what I do.

So when I decided to make a traveling exhibition, I didn’t want to make it look like it was traveling. I wanted to try to integrate it into the landscape like I do with all my other work.

I always write fairy tales for my sculptures, so the story for this exhibition also had to explain why the trolls were traveling around. I was also inspired by Greta Thunberg’s activism, and by groups like Extinction Rebellion. So in my story, the old trolls really hate humans and want to kill us because we’re destroying the environment. But the younger trolls think that humans are just young and stupid, and instead of killing us, they want to educate us.

These young trolls have formed a group that’s called “Save the Humans,” and they’re traveling from city to city to spread their message of saving people.

What has been the reaction to the trolls from volunteers and visitors? What do you hope they get out of it?

Unfortunately, I am mainly at my sculptures when they're being built, so I don’t often see visitors interacting with them. But people always say that the trolls bring the child out in them, that they can feel their energy, and that the sculptures feel so alive. They also really, really like the message about recycling.