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So... Corona blew up while I was working on a sculpture in Puerto Rico...

...all of a sudden, everything got canceled! I just went from having so many projects that I honestly was a bit scared of how to manage to do them all, to having no projects at all—COVID-19 wiped my calendar clean.

I just plummeted straight into depression obsessing about how to keep my art career afloat, how to pay the bills, would I have to fire my assistants, and would I have to leave my workshop... everything was just $#!%...

After pondering around and moping a bit more, I decided to just start crunching to make the best of it!

I wanted to make a: TEN-SCULPTURE, NATIONWIDE, CORONA-FRIENDLY TREASURE HUNT FOR GIANTS IN THE WILD! So the project was both a way of putting my mind away from that loss but also a way of putting that energy towards something positive. And obviously, everybody else was in the same situation as me, so I figured I could do something that would entertain and involve as many people as possible.

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I think we had around 1000 people volunteering to help build, scavenge wood, take pallets apart, and make sandwiches... we even had people come out to make coffee for the people making sandwiches for the people taking pallets apart. It really turned out to be a massive community project. (I just want to make it clear here that we did follow all the COVID guidelines and because we were outside, it was never really a problem, and no one I know of got sick.)

It was so fun to be a part of a little timeless troll bubble, where nothing else existed and we just lived inside this fairytale building trolls in the forest.

It was really the best summer ever and just the perfect way to introduce my American wife to all the outskirts of Denmark and meeting new friends around the country along the way in the 6 months it took us to build all 10 sculptures.

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Last weekend, I went to visit my parents in Odense, where I'm from. It was snowing heavily, but we decided to go revisit the troll we built there for this project anyway. It's hidden inside a forest without any established trails other than the one we made. I counted 98 people going and coming in just one hour on that snowy day. That's a lot of people a year if you add it up, and I made that sculpture of trash just 6 months ago with some friends and a bunch of people who came out to help. This just makes me really proud and puts a fat line under the main message of all my art. Dreams can be made of anything, so watch out before you take your trash out!

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#7

Anker Drømmefanger (Den Gamle Losseplads, Fanø)

Anker Drømmefanger (Den Gamle Losseplads, Fanø)

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Check out my other hidden sculptures in my previous post here, here, and here.

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How I Trolled Covid19