Mama Rosa giant wooden troll (Firefly Grove Park)

Mama Rosa is a Danish artist's giant troll made from the trees and street lights of the suburb she stands in. Thomas Dambo built the sculpture in Firefly Grove Park, on Wauwatosa's west side, in May 2025; it is his first troll in Wisconsin. The Wauwatosa Tourism Commission commissioned it in 2024. Dambo's team of 21 built the face and ears at his studio in Denmark and shipped them to Wisconsin, and the figure was completed on site over May with more than 100 local volunteers. Dambo told Milwaukee Magazine that it takes a thousand hours to build a troll.

The timber is oak, elm and ash from city street trees removed for disease or damage, which Dambo and the Department of Public Works milled together. The flowers she clutches are former Tosa Village street lights. The city's communications manager told OnMilwaukee that they are fitted with LEDs powered by the park's solar panels, making Mama Rosa Dambo's first troll with built-in illumination. A plaque near the troll carries Dambo's poem about flowers with no roots that glow when the sun sleeps.