In an alcove of trees, a crowd patiently watched a team of Danish artists on Friday as they added the finishing touches to their newest sculpture. The team’s lead artist, Thomas Dambo, introduced the art to Pease Park: a larger-than-life, wooden troll called “Malin’s Fountain”.
Dambo said he builds his trolls using locally sourced, recycled materials. “Malin’s Fountain” joins 128 other trolls worldwide and Malin is the artist’s first troll in Texas.
“A lot of the material is found locally (by) local volunteers,” Dambo said. “I’ve built (the trolls) into the local environment. I try to make them (seem) like something that grew up there because both the craft and the material, and then the idea — all of that is reflected on something that was local.”
Austin’s heat and lack of natural water stuck with Dambo after a preliminary site visit last summer, he said. Each troll has its own theme, and Dambo chose Malin’s theme to be water.
“When I was here, the creek was dried up,” Dambo said. “I saw that people were putting up water feeders for the birds and the squirrels because (there) was not a lot of water for them.”
The theme of water appears throughout Dambo’s newest sculpture, including its recycled materials. Allison Johnson, the Pease Park Conservancy’s community engagement director, said some of the sculpture’s wood came from a retired water tank at the University’s J.J. Pickle Research Campus.
“We have so many University of Texas students that come to the park, so we thought that was a really cool connection,” Johnson said.
Elijah Ward, a speech-language pathology sophomore, discovered “Malin’s Fountain” hidden within the trees during a visit to Pease Park on Monday.
“I thought it was going to be a lot smaller,” Ward said. “I didn’t think that it would be this much wood. With recycling, you think of plastics or other things. The wood is definitely a surprise.”
Sitting crisscross, Malin the troll holds a large metal bowl to collect water. Dambo said he hopes future parkgoers will use Malin’s bowl to share water with the park’s animals during hot summers.
“My trolls are the voices of the animals and the plants,” Dambo said. “It’s not super important that there’s water in it all the time. It’s kind of a statement that there’s no water in it because we don’t give a fuck about the animals. Maybe it becomes a tradition like you go and feed the ducks with your grandmother — you go and give a little bit of water.”
Johnson said Dambo likes to place his trolls in wooded areas so people “have to search for them.” To achieve Dambo’s intended effect, she said the conservancy created a “Troll Trek” that leads visitors from nearby parking garages to the sculpture.
“The signs along the (Troll Trek) will allow people to do a little trivia game,” Johnson said. “We’re really excited to see the delight that it brings to people.”
Dambo said he hopes his art made from trash can change society’s perspective on reusing garbage and the waste management industry.
“Half the cuss words we have are ‘dirtbag’ and ‘trashy’ because we look down on our trash,” Dambo said. “If we want to change that perspective, we have to try and see trash as our superstars.”
