'Troll Hunt' is here! There are trolls amid the trees at Morton Arboretum … one of them 50 feet long
LISLE, Ill. - The troll dubbed Joe peers out over the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway and the suburban sprawl beyond, one hand shielding his brow as he scans the horizon, the other holding a giant spear.
He is a handmade, deliberately secondhand thing, his body pieced together from discarded shipping pallets, his hair a tangle of trimmed branches, the spear a ramrod-straight trunk of a conifer that had to be chopped down.
But he is imposing nonetheless, standing 20-some feet tall, with an expression that is friendly enough but looks ready to veer into menacing, especially if someone tries to broach the massive berm he stands on to disturb the idyll of the Morton Arboretum behind him.
Thomas Dambo, the effervescent Danish artist who created Joe and five of his brethren for a compelling new woodland installation, sees Joe as a kind of border guard between the placid west suburban tree haven and the frenetic, destructive industrial world symbolized by the scurrying
