Atlanta’s Lantern Parades are more than ‘illuminated, animated giant puppets’ that appear to have come to life
Creator Chantelle Rytter’s obsession is one with a history of folklore and pageantry
The cancellation due to rain of the 2025 Atlanta BeltLine Lantern Parade was devastating for Chantelle Rytter, its founder and chief instigator. To make matters worse, a planned reschedule of the popular event was scuttled when her inventory of handmade, fanciful creations was ruined by a construction project gone awry. Weather permiting, the 2026 Atlanta BeltLine Lantern Parade is set for Saturday, September 19.
“Us getting rained out last year was so heartbreaking,” Rytter said during a visit to her new studio at the Lee & White complex in Atlanta’s West End. “The weather has been our friend, mostly,” she added, “but outdoor arts people are scared these days with climate change; it’s gotten way out of control.”
Rytter, whose prevailing attitude is nothing if not positive, wanted a redo but the nearby warehouse she occupied at the time suffered a construction mishap. “A bunch of debris got shaken out of the ceiling during roofing. I came back from a camping trip to find all my stuff covered in dust and water which then sprouted two different varieties of mold,” Rytter said. “I had to remediate and evacuate and throw away a whole bunch of things.”
It’s human nature to assign blame, she noted. “But I wasn't going to get all mad at Lee & White, but it’s not one person’s fault.” The havoc she encountered meant there was no chance to remake the parade. “Such a mess; I couldn’t recover from that to do it last summer or fall.” One positive consequence though was Lee + White gifting her a temporary pristine, Lantern Parade Studio. With air-conditioning.
Integrative arts
Born in Baltimore, Rytter enrolled in theatre programs at Penn State University before switching to integrative arts, and thought of becoming a writer. Her initial taste of parade culture came from an extended stay in New Orleans starting in 1991, when she was 25. It was her love of Tennessee Williams that first galvanized her to make the trek there. On arrival, she stumbled upon Mardi Gras festivities replete with colorful floats, and the revelry made a huge impact on her. “That was a surprise. I’d never seen anything like it before, and it spun my head around — I didn’t know you could do this.”
Weird and brilliant
The metamorphosis from stunned spectator to active parader didn’t happen right away, and processions at night with lanterns, costumes and bright, lively puppets weren’t originally in her plans. Rytter’s interest in the general practice of parading was piqued by its considerable history, both here and abroad. An uncredited newspaper article from 1887 reports the Atlanta Bicycle Club organized an event in Piedmont Park that had “wheelmen” riding bikes (possibly penny farthings) bedecked with “six to twenty lamps of different colors, and at night the effect is weird and brilliant.” These parades continued in various forms for decades, but were strictly segregated until 1961, when Atlanta’s school system was finally commingled following a lawsuit. (The article states there was “a similar parade for negroes” in Washington Park starting in 1954).
“The longest continuous one I know of is the Great Baltimore Lantern Parade, around Halloween, in, oddly enough, my hometown,” Rytter said. “Seattle has had one for a pretty long time; before that it was Public Dreams Vancouver. And they’re all over Asia,” she added. “The night parades around the world are so beautiful — you really forget where you are. It’s like being in a theatre watching a play when the lights go down. It’s magic.”
English inspiration
Rytter also was inspired by a group of artists in England known as Welfare State International, an experimental theatre collective founded in 1968 that produced celebratory art, giant puppets and fire shows as well as the “modern” lantern parade. The group aimed to make art as readily accessible as health care and education while staging events in the streets, eschewing traditional galleries and theatres.
On a visit to the UK, Rytter visited the workshop of Korean puppetmaster Andrew Kim and observed various cavalcades around the country. “It’s an English tradition started circa the 1980s; there are a lot of lantern parades there,” she said. “I got clued into illuminated, animated giant puppets — creatures that look like they’re alive. I got really excited about it. I then came home to make lanterns with materials and ideas that I found in England. My contribution is doing them in nicer weather,” she quipped.
Prior work
Upon moving from New Orleans to Atlanta just before the Olympics, Rytter found work in the corporate world and festered in its clutches while she considered her future. “I spent ten years in a cube on the top of SunTrust Tower, in a little pantry up in the attic, where I made coffee and cookies at a law firm,” she said. “I had a lot of free time so I got to figure out what I wanted to do. It was a blessing to have a stupid job with a ton of free time in a very quiet environment.” During this period, Rytter again visited New Orleans to immerse herself “in this whole culture around festivities tied to the (Mardi Gras) parade,” she said. “It’s like a community wellness program, just like the way they came together after (Hurricane) Katrina.” Rytter, who was going through a divorce, said her soul needed reviving. “I needed to get with my people and laugh and dance in the street — get my creative ya-yas out.” That’s when she “dreamt up” a lantern parade for Atlanta, one that would retain the spirit of New Orleans but with its own pageantry and folklore.
Rytter had no idea she would end up making “these ridiculously large objects” and encouraging others to learn the craft. “It’s my niche interest.” A key component of Rytter’s activities is the Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons, of which she is founder and captain. Together since 1999, its numbers and membership tend to vary, and it originally coalesced around food. “We were a bunch of foodies who cooked a lot in each other’s homes — definitely gluttony but we are really, really grateful for it. Our creed is to try everything, have seconds and say thank you, and we mean it more around the banquet of life.”
Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons debuted as a Krewe in the Little Five Points Halloween parade in 2001. “We did that parade for years — it was very, very fun. Our heyday was when it went down Euclid Avenue and we could park the float in front of the Yacht Club.” The main ethos of her practice is that anyone can create a costume or lantern or puppet, and she regularly holds workshops and master classes in her studio for aspiring paraders. This egalitarian approach is in contrast with the private membership requirements of the big “blue blood” crews in New Orleans “where you have to be born into it,” she said. “They are old private organizations, like a golf club. But here anybody can get a costume going on and come out on parade day which is what everybody does. I love the ‘everybody’ part.”
In 2010, at the behest of local performance artist Priscilla Smith, Rytter applied to the nascent Atlanta BeltLine Art organization and proposed a lantern parade, and it has been funded and supported by the group ever since. Smith, who was the executive director of Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery from 2007 until 2016, first met Rytter sometime in 2008 when Eyedrum was rented for a Skeleton Krewe Ball.
“I was really impressed with the nature of the Krewe and Chantelle’s facilitation of bringing a community together for creativity, fun and play,” Smith told CL. “When we were putting together the very first Art on the BeltLine and had opened the application process, I knew it was perfect for Chantelle and the Krewe. She said she’d always wanted to do a lantern parade at night. She wrote the proposal, got accepted and the rest is history.”
Smith recalls the first parade, which roamed from Irwin Street to Piedmont Park: “I remember being on the gravel trail behind where the skate park is now, with the skyline to our left. I kept running ahead and to the rear. There were too many people to see all at once. Our (slightly generous) estimates of participation were about 500, which was enormous at the time. It was a display of community expressed through art in a way I’d always dreamed of, and look where she’s gotten it to now.”
Events elsewhere
This cheerful spectacle, however, is far from being her only annual project: upcoming happenings include All Souls Altars & Parade of the Dead in Little Five Points on Sunday, Nov. 1; then there is Where The Weird Things Are which is not a parade as such, but a static display in which the creatures are stationary while visitors saunter and interact. It takes place this year on Saturday, Oct. 24 in Old Fourth Ward Park from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Again, attendee participation is crucial.
There are out-of-town events coming up as well: “The Memphis one is called Tom Lee’s Gumption Revival (On Saturday, Oct. 3). I’m proud of that,” Rytter said. “Tom Lee was a local hero, a Black man who couldn’t swim. He was in his boat on the Mississippi River when a steamship capsized (on May 8, 1925). It was full of a bunch of rich white people from the American Society of Civil Engineers, all dressed up. He managed to save 32 of them, and he did it all night, back and forth, in his 28-foot skiff. He must have lashed a lantern to his boat to keep looking for people, and he had the gumption to do it; he could have just gone home and had dinner.” Rytter added, “We should be inspired by the likes of Tom Lee.”
In addition, Rytter and the Krewe will be in Hilton Head on Saturday, Nov. 14, for The Hilton Head Lantern Parade on the beach. “In 2020 and 2021, we did a pandemic adaptation Lantern Puppet Safari drive through Hilton Head; I want to do one in Atlanta, but I'd have to figure out where to put all that traffic.” The Hapeville Butterfly Parade and the aquatic Sandy Springs Lantern Parade — on the Chattahoochee River — are on the yearly calendar as well. And she’s thinking about staging a play with giant puppets at some point.
During a stroll around her studio, Rytter pointed out some members of her charming menagerie, all pretty massive: Alice the Alligator; a Sheepshead Fish with a Carol Channing vibe; a Parliament of Owls (“that was a parade we ran for years”); the Oak King (“look how billowy he is”); Kudzulu, Lord of the Vines; a purple bird named Slurpee; and Flirtatia, the Fresh Phoenix of the Westside. Scattered about are seahorses, a “monster” chicken, a hippo, activated clocks with striped legs, plus flowers, turtles, butterflies, mushrooms and assorted “fantastical botanicals.” Among the puppets is the orange-hued Rex, based on Rytter's cherished feline and for whom she threw a traditional jazz funeral in her neighborhood of Adair Park.
The 2026 Atlanta BeltLine Lantern Parade is set for Saturday, September 19, stepping off at 8 p.m. sharp from the newly-named Beulah Colbert Park (formerly Adair Park II) with the line-up starting on Gillette Avenue at 7:15 p.m. Serenaded by five marching bands, the cortege will proceed down Allene Avenue before accessing the Southwest Trail and wrap things up with an all-band jam session in the main parking area of Lee & White at 1070 White Street. “It makes perfect sense to me to have a little bit in the neighborhood and a little bit on the trail,” Rytter said. “There is so much spectator space in the ‘hood to watch the parade — the sidewalks, streets… We go past older people’s homes and those with small children, and hopefully we’ll get house parties. The parade start is across the tracks from West End MARTA with a shuttle from the finish. And the Beltline Southside Trail makes it so bikeable.It’s the best route ever. I feel really fortunate that we get to have this.” —CL—