The Tree Thieves

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-05

[00:00:07]When I think of Clinton, I think of our crooked roads [music] and you can tell that there is a story behind each street corner [music] and each neighborhood and each space.

[00:00:25]>> It's a nice place to raise your kids.

[00:00:28]It's a little town.

[00:00:29]>> [music] >> Cheap living. Kickapoo Point Park is a nice place.

[00:00:34]>> A lot of us have found [music] great friendships here.

[00:00:37]>> I think, you know, growing up Clinton was a town that you had to look for trouble to find it.

[00:00:51]>> Is that the train we're hearing?

[00:00:52]>> Mhm.

[00:00:53]>> You just get used to it?

[00:00:54]>> Yeah.

[00:00:56]>> And now having the trolls, oh, look at that, [music] is just a perfect way to share that specialness.

[00:01:03]>> We would drive 3 hours to be here.

[00:01:05]>> And then there's two more in the [music] area.

[00:01:07]>> So what better place to have a Thomas Dambo sculpture?

[00:01:12]>> We've studied them all at school. It's been really exciting.

[00:01:16]They're obsessed with everything troll.

[00:01:18]>> Without further ado, Thomas Dambo.

[00:01:21]>> [cheering and applause] >> With Thomas Dambo's work, it's the [music] work that has gone into these pieces that has been the most rewarding part of this entire process.

[00:01:34]>> Hi everybody.

[00:01:36]>> [cheering] >> Well, I am the garbage artist, Thomas Dambo. I am known for my giant recycled wooden troll sculptures that I have hidden almost 200 around the world over the last decade.

[00:01:50]Clinton is a city that grew in the logging days.

[00:01:56]There is three trolls. It's three brothers, Warren, Helmut, and Marvin.

[00:02:01]So, in the fairy tale, the trolls woke up one day and the whole forest was gone.

[00:02:07]And then the trolls started walking down the banks of the Mississippi River until they found [music] the city of Clinton. And here they could sense that this was where all the trees had been cut. And so they decided, "We are going to steal all our trees back."

[00:02:21]So, one is laying and cuddling with this tree. The other one is walking with a [music] giant pot with a 40-ft high tree in it. And the third one is collecting and hoarding branches from the entire area.

[00:02:32]So, I thought this was an important lesson of a story because my trolls they carry a message of protecting the forest that are the lungs of our planet.

[00:02:43]>> When you think of the Midwest in the 1800s, if you wanted to find opportunity, Clinton was a place to come.

[00:02:51]Mississippi is the best highway in the world.

[00:02:55]Here in Clinton, we have a lumber companies that are able to get land in northern Wisconsin, northern Minnesota.

[00:03:04]And then if they could cut the trees down, get them into the river, they can float the logs down to Clinton.

[00:03:11]And then they could cut wood and get that all across America.

[00:03:17]At one point, there was 13 millionaires living here in in Clinton. And so there was a big boom in of the lumber industry here in in Clinton in that late 1800s.

[00:03:29]This is our riverfront.

[00:03:32]In 1855, the rail company was looking to build a bridge over the Mississippi River.

[00:03:39]And so Clinton became a town mainly for the rail.

[00:03:46]You know, what we were trying to do here was create a monopoly on the lumber industry. So, we wanted to own all the timber in the Northwoods. We wanted to control the Mississippi River.

[00:03:59]And so, for 20-odd some years from 1875 to about 1895, it was booming. And in 1893, there was a big panic and the lumber companies realized, "Oh, man, we didn't replant the trees."

[00:04:13]There's no more trees in Wisconsin and Minnesota. So, by 1907, the sawmills are closed here in Clinton, Iowa. Clinton was not prepared. They did not know what to do. In a 10-year period, 5,000 plus people left Clinton, Iowa because there was no jobs. And they didn't know what was going to happen.

[00:04:29]Our lumber story needed a a new way to be told and that's through Thomas. And I am so excited for people [music] to be able to see Clinton's lumber story in a modern way.

[00:04:45]>> Okay, good enough.

[00:04:46]One of the things I'm so happy about in this project is that we managed to make a gigantic workshop with all the volunteers that helped us collect like branches from compost piles and cut trees on the streets and like all this random branches.

[00:05:04]>> We'll carry it all in and just and then we'll roughen up the entrance with that.

[00:05:08]>> For me, this is just like exactly what it is that is Thomas Dambo and what it is I do and that is activate the volunteers and things that are left with no value and then make them into this exhibition.

[00:05:29]>> I'm working on a couple of pieces here.

[00:05:31]I I have a big installation project in Marshalltown, Iowa.

[00:05:36]My concept is to feel like [music] it's been taken over by nature again.

[00:05:44]When I decided to pursue art professionally, this is exactly where I wanted to be an [music] artist.

[00:05:51]So, uh this is the Paint-A-Factor building.

[00:05:55]We would use street art, uh graffiti art, and murals to transform this into an urban outdoor gallery.

[00:06:05]This is a place where it's really hard for people to have access to the art, so I thought, "Well, if people can't go to the art, then we just have to bring the art to the people."

[00:06:19]And [music] the culmination of that is the Dambo Trolls.

[00:06:22]>> I helped work on this one. Oh, look at that part.

[00:06:28]>> [laughter] >> And I just think those things give people [music] permission to dream and to be bold and to have visions of their own that they want to >> [music] >> see happen.

[00:06:40]>> Woo!

[00:06:42]>> Seating's over on this side. Thank you so much for coming.

[00:06:48]>> You cannot deny the fact that Clinton's had to reinvent itself many times.

[00:06:53]>> [cheering] >> Why was somebody who's going to decide to fly around the world was going to choose Clinton, Iowa to visit? Thomas Dambo brings another anchor, another awareness level.

[00:07:04]>> So, I thought I should make a type of art that shows us that our trash has value so that we can learn to love our trash.

[00:07:12]>> [applause] >> My hope for the Clinton community, we understand that sharing it with the world is a privilege and that we can invite others here. They can explore our town through the trolls.

[00:07:26]>> Seeing the trolls be a piece of our lumber history. Not only do we get to celebrate art and culture with these trolls, but also people coming in to see these trolls get to see a piece of that history as they come through. It was really neat [music] to see like that light bulb go off in Thomas's head. We watched our story connect [music] to his artistic vision. Helmut carrying the the tree back up to the Northwoods, the other trolls falling asleep under a tree that's meant to be their seedling or a place that was built with the lumber from Eagle Point Lodge, the Joyce Lumber Company's stamp, the the wooden floor, and it was one of the coolest things in the world to see.

[00:08:11]>> I say great cuz I like it trashy.

[00:08:15]I'm a dumpster diver.

[00:08:21]Thank you. Thank you.

[00:08:23]>> [music] [music] [singing] [music] [singing] [music] [music] [music] >> I say great cuz I like it trashy. I'm a dumpster diver. [music] I'm the son of a And my mama's a a Even my honey's a a >> [music] >> And I raised my sons to dumpster dive.