Traveling troll exhibit visits local nature parks

Welcome back in to Seattle News Today. It wasn't that long ago that we had trolls just kind of taking over our viewing area. If you never saw these things, I mean, pretty incredible stuff started popping up all around Seattle. But the experiment isn't done just yet. No, we have new trolls making their way in and around the Seattle area. And I say Seattle area because it seems like they've kind of moved. They moved down south. Fox 13 News photojournalist Michael Driver is exploring with us today. Let's get a closer look at Trolls in the Park. This is just the most amazing place. It's so unique. You know, it's a traditional walkthrough kind of zoo experience. North Art Trek is all about connecting people with nature. I mean, it's our mission. We, of course, love to come here anyway for the animals. So it's a fun added bonus to see the trolls. We've been looking for something like this for quite a while, but nothing really kind of fit right or didn't fit the theme of Northwest Trek. I think they're fabulous. I think they are so creative. Finding the trolls and being able to have them here is just amazing. I think it's going to bring a lot of new first-time visitors to Northwest Trek. Well, it makes me really glad I'm retired so I can come during the week. We have eight new trolls. It's a traveling exhibit. They're going to be here at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park and Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium from October 15th to January 24th. And it's called Trolls, a Field Study. It's like really, really like, you know, blocky pieces, but when put together, you know, becomes a rounded, beautiful thing. Thomas Dambo is an internationally known artist from Denmark, and he creates these fascinating trolls out of reclaimed material. But they're all different, and somebody can be that creative and come up with the ideas. That's an imagination. See this? This is my dambo. Yeah! All right! Look at the hair! You know, the hair on this thing, every little bit is perfect. This is Anya, and she's made from recycled pallets and fallen tree branches. It's a great message for kids to learn about reusing resources. The more things we can do to encourage people to get out in nature and realize how important our environment is, then absolutely they should have more and more and more. It's fabulous. I mean, we live in such a gorgeous state, and how could you not take advantage of it? How could you not go outside? It's just beautiful. Yes. If we get people to come out to see the trolls and then also, you know, fall in love with our animals, that's a bonus, you know. like I said we're gonna have people that have never been here before to come see the trolls and they're gonna see this park and just want to come back over and over get out on the trails get out and do stuff right I mean parks typically are free and when it's something this cool it's worth paying a little bit and yeah get outside get outside go see some trolls that's right that's right, now wonder checking in live with Fox 13 photo journalist Michael Driver uh-oh where where did we just find you Driver well i've kind of been taken hostage here um so i'm out at the Point Defiance Zoo and aquarium uh in tacoma um the the location of the story you just saw was down in Eatonville at the Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, where you could find eight of these amazing trolls. Here at the zoo in Tacoma, you can also find, there's four of them. So including this one, there's three more inside the zoo. You go on a scavenger hunt and you got to find them. They're not going to tell you exactly where they are, so you got to maneuver around. You got to look for the trolls. I can't confirm, but a source did tell me that this one's name is Bogey. Can't confirm it. Bogey. So they did the research, and I'm actually being hugged by Bogey right now. I was going to ask you. It feels actually kind of comfortable. It's comfortable. I like it. It feels good. I couldn't tell. He looks like a friendly troll. So from my vantage point, it looks like he's hugging you. I just want to make sure you're safe, right? Like that troll's a nice troll. Yeah, I mean, I can go down because I wanted to make sure it wasn't one of those deals where, like, if you stand here for 30 seconds, the hands start to clench together because then it would be very awkward. But I haven't made eye contact with Bogey yet, so I don't know. I think we're cool. I think we'll be all right. We're friends now. He looks like a friendly guy. Now, I'll tell our viewers, this artwork put out by Thomas Dambo, I mean, we saw the unveiling of a few of them in seattle a year or two ago but but this is kind of like that on steroids because because where you are you guys have almost as many trolls down there uh just at Point Defiance Zoo and aquarium as we have all of seattle area up here so Dambo is really putting a footprint on really all of Puget Sound now this is pretty cool man it's super cool and it's just like i said so um out here south i mean you've got 12 total so the you know the Northwest Trek Wildlife Park um you have eight there and then four more here so you got the opportunity within like you know it's not a far drive from each place to come out and check out 12 of these trolls um you know Thomas Dambo like he does incredible work i mean he's an international artist out of Denmark he's got pieces all across the United States internationally even so it's just cool to have something that's kind of spread out amongst you know the world to be right here and here long enough where people can actually take time to experience it you know starting tomorrow you can come to both locations and walk through and start seeing these trolls and these are going to be here until i believe january 24th so i mean it's not like a week week thing or a weekend where you got to hurry up and get out here like you know if you get the time you've got you've got quite a while to be able to go and kind of maneuver around and and find them and um no it's just cool because it's um you kind of heard in the piece it gets people outside i mean you know the weather's nice but you know sometimes people you know they want to make excuses of not going out and about and being in the wilderness and stuff um this kind of makes you want to go do that so you can go to a nice park and then you've also got the you know the ability to go around and now the motivation of like let's go out and find these trolls let's go check them out because they're all different all of them are no none of them two are alike and that's the cool thing um his creative mind i don't i don't know i want to be in his mind to see where he's come up with some of these themes for the trolls um but they're all uniquely awesome and that's the thing like you find one then you go find another one it's got a totally different story um so it just it just keeps it's fun it just keeps and it's for all ages i saw when i was out shooting um little kids and then seniors like everybody was having the equally um the same amount of fun looking for these trolls and analyzing them getting a close-up look um because it is i mean it it is amazing when you get up here and and really just check these things out and really see all the time and effort that went into them you know i'll tell you i i've kind of fallen in love with Thomas Dambo's work uh from when he first started building in this area but i i've been following him all around the globe and i i'll be honest i got a little jealous i started seeing more and more of these trolls pop up and and i've seen all the ones up here this kind of unlocks like a whole new chapter to explore you talked about getting outside i mean this is this is a really cool opportunity and it's my understanding that all these things are built with like reusable material like this isn't like he just went out like i know these things look like okay cool he has all this amazing uh materials right now like he he went and found this stuff it's it's not like he just took raw materials and went to Lowe's department store like My understanding is what you've got hugging you over there has been like reused, recycled. It's all that's the cool thing. You talk about the environment. Right. And things we can do to keep the environment safe. And all these are refurbished. All this wood is is done. It's refurbished. So this is stuff that maybe wood that washed up in a flood. Maybe there was a tree knocked down in a windstorm or something like that. and branches here and there all this stuff was just he he took all this stuff up and then he refurbished it um into into what you see and i think like you get really close and you see the intricate details like some of the wood looks like kind of like not great but the way he did it it just it gives it like a a rustic look right and just like how he pieced everything together the one gentleman i talked to in the piece you know like you get up and you see all these different plates right like everything's kind of plated together but like once it all gets put together like it just it becomes something beautiful and um like i said i think it's the detail like it's you know he could have just put this stuff together and all that but like even you know from the face up to the hair like just making the branches and stuff but look like hair pieces and it's just um i don't know like i said i would love to just sit down with with uh thomas and just kind of pick his brain and be like man what what goes through your mind when you're deciding how you're going to piece these together um and all that because it's i look this i couldn't do this i couldn't do it and it's um it's amazing i really um i appreciate what he's done and i think everybody else that sees it's appreciated that's why so many people are excited about getting out and uh and going and finding these things and you know learning more about them i think we call that game recognized game michael driver always has that artistic vision behind the scenes thomas Danbo has a different version of artistic vision we we love to see it hey man i i hope you got to enjoy putting together this story as much as I enjoy watching it because this stuff is just even from afar when I watch some of this stuff because this stuff has been starting to pop up all around the globe it isn't just in the states he's doing this stuff internationally so it's really cool to see some of this before I let you go just want to ask you is there anything that stood out to you the most as you're putting this together I know you were out there you got to see a sneak peek obviously everybody else can start seeing these more and more as we move forward here but was there anything that caught your attention more than anything else oh man I mean, I think it's, um, just how something brings people into a place that normally they wouldn't want to go to, right? Like this park that I was in, um, you know, the, uh, Northwest Trek, um, wildlife park, it's beautiful park, but you know, I've just, I've got parks around my, my house and stuff that I go to. So like, I've never really had the want to, to go to this park because it's a little bit of a drive. but then when you put something inside of that park that's so intriguing to people it makes them step out of their comfort zone and step out of like the the daily norm that they get into so i think it was cool just to see people that had never been to that park before um show up and because of of the trolls so it gave them an incentive to go do that and you know talking to the the parks uh people that they said that's their hope you know for people that have never been to this park before to come out look at the trolls but then once you're there fall in love with the animals they've got so many amazing animals throughout the park so it's like you go out there with the goal of finding a troll but then you walk away with a love of your favorite animal you saw whether it was a hawk or an owl or a grizzly bear so it's just it's a win-win for everybody it's just something it's one of those cool things that yet again just makes the Pacific Northwest so cool and great and it's just it's it's it's awesome that we have the opportunity to have this uh in our backyard i couldn't couldn't agree anymore uh i know that i'll be out there with my family in the near future photojournalist Michael Drive let's go let's go man let me know when let me know when i'll i'll tap you the wife me and gogo we'll uh we'll show up we'll bring all the kids you bring yours i'll bring mine we'll make it work i've got a sneak peek so i mean if you want to play the scavenger hunt thing we can do that or i might kind of already know where they're at so whatever you want to do at least you admitted that you might be able to beat me really quickly knowing where they all are I might have taken you up on that without even thinking it through man Driver as always bringing us some of the best coverage out there