The BeltLine lit up with hundreds of handmade lanterns on May 11 for the 14th annual Lantern Parade, led by artist Chantelle Rytter and her Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons.
Each year, Rytter acts as the creator, curator and orchestrator of the do-it-yourself artistic showcase. Her “krewe” of fellow artists put together massive, animated puppets alit from within using a variety of unconventional materials and plenty of creativity. Then, the group helps people make their own wild designs at a series of public workshops in the weeks leading up to the event.
On the day of the parade thousands of people gathered at Adair Park with their lanterns, varying from concepts like “Alice in Wonderland” to simple decorated paper spheres. The paraders were joined by five marching bands: Atlanta Drum Academy, Black Sheep Ensemble, Seed & Feed Marching Abominables, Atlanta Freedom Band, Wasted Potential Brass Band and Grammy-Award winning Kebbi Williams and the Wolfpack.
At kickoff, the group begins its journey through a path of onlookers on the BeltLine before ending at the Lee + White Food Hall parking lot with an “All-Band-Puppet-Jam.” It’s one of the BeltLine’s longest-running events, with tens of thousands of people coming out annually to participate in and spectate the parade. Last year, 15,000 people turned out to walk and watch the procession.
“Parade arts is your best bet for creative placemaking because it’s a living art form, you know, we’re actively creating it to gather,” Rytter.
But the parade has not always been a major spectacle. At first, it was something Rytter did for herself and her community. The artist had lived in New Orleans for ten years before moving to Atlanta for her marriage, where she felt the city was a “soulless parking lot.”
Rytter returned to New Orleans, where she formed the Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons in 1999. The krewe followed the long-standing Mardi Gras tradition, where social organizations pay fees and contribute to parade floats for annual celebrations. The artist said she started it to “lure” her Atlanta friends to the city. But after her divorce, Rytter came back to Georgia.
“I moved to Atlanta, and it was like landing on a soft pillow,” Rytter said.
She had a job, a friend group and a new city, but Rytter missed parading. So she relocated the krewe to Atlanta.
“We started parading; I was doing it for me,” Rytter said.
She started applying for grants from the BeltLine, receiving funds to kick off with the first parade in 2010. It drew a few hundred people in the first year. Rytter was adamant the parade would not have a theme, encouraging participants to “make up their own theme.”
“I’m not gonna tell you what kind of art to make,” Rytter said. “So invent — I love seeing new ways to make a volume of light; people have made lanterns out of all kinds of things.”
The only criterion was keeping the lanterns handmade and illuminated. Rytter would run workshops to help people make creations for little money in a short period of time to limit possible roadblocks. Over time, the parade grew, and the BeltLine eventually told Rytter the event would become a permanent fixture.
“People came to it like a tall glass of water,” Rytter said. “I mean, I feel it met a need, and that makes me love this place, and since then, it’s just been so sweet to me.”
In the years since Rytter first found Atlanta to be a “soulless parking lot,” the artist has formed a deep relationship with the city and Metro area. Now, she believes Atltanta is “creative and playful.” She has also created a family of community-based annual lantern parades in Decatur, Sandy Springs, Midtown, Savannah and Hilton Head Island. Each event is specific to the city, with references to mascots and cultural landmarks.
“I think it’s just the way we feel about people and place, and then the giant puppet-like encounters with fantastical things in ordinary environments change our brains about what is possible,” Rytter said.
The artist started parading in Atlanta for herself, but now she sees the act of “creative play” as an essential civic gift to the city.
“I believe we have a common calling to delight one another, to see the people we share a community with as playful volumes of light, and to be witnessed as such, does a body good,” Rytter said. “It is restorative, it is collective joy, and we need it.”
For the first time in 20 years, her creations and krewe have found their own place: a studio at Lee + White. With the massive warehouse space, Rytter has been able to not only store her puppets but also create new ones while running workshops and opening the space to the public.
“Having an active, professional producing studio is just dreamy, dreamy, dreamy,” Rytter said.
With the new space, Rytter has been able to experiment with new forms of puppetry, like the “cardboard revolution” made out of corrugated scraps. The property is under a month-to-month lease, so the artist is not sure how long she will remain. But Rytter said the studio brings a “weird value” to the region.
“It would be the dream to have the lantern parade studio be like a cultural destination, like a mix of Mardi Gras World in New Orleans where there’s an exhibition space and a production space, and the Center for Puppetry Arts,” Rytter said.
