“Mama Rosa” is a 24-foot-tall troll sculpture in Wauwatosa’s Firefly Grove Park, created by Danish recycle artist Thomas Dambo and unveiled in 2025. She was the first of Dambo’s giant trolls to come to Wisconsin, and unlike a typical bronze or concrete public sculpture, Mama Rosa was built from reclaimed materials tied directly to Wauwatosa. Much of her 4,000-plus-pound body came from trees removed from the city’s urban forest, while her long hair is made from oak branches. She even carries a bouquet of old Wauwatosa streetlight posts, holding one up to her nose as if she’s stopping to smell a flower.
Mama Rosa is the centerpiece of Firefly Grove Park at 1900 N. 116th Street, where the giant sculpture mixes recycled art with trails, natural areas and other unusual public-art features. She also has a particularly strange detail for a wooden troll: built-in lights that switch on automatically as darkness falls. Dambo created Mama Rosa as part of his worldwide series of enormous recycled-material trolls, using discarded objects to show how things that would otherwise be thrown away can become something worth seeking out.
