On January 13th, community members gathered to show off their handcrafted lanterns and mark the beginning of the GLOW 2024 outdoor exhibition at the Under The Silver Moon Lantern Parade in Downtown Cary Park.
READ MORE ABOUT GLOW 2024 HERE
Throughout November, December, and early January, internationally renowned visual teaching artist Gowri Savoor led a series of lantern-making workshops that allowed the community to learn how to create lantern structures using sustainable materials. We got the chance to chat with Gowri right before she joined the parade herself.
How long have you been a part of the Lantern Parade?
This is Cary’s third parade, but Angelo and I have been doing parades in Vermont since 2010, and I’ve been doing parades all over Vermont and New England. I’ve also been doing them since the early 2000s in England. So I’ve been doing this for a long time.
SEE MORE PHOTOS FROM THE PARADE AT @DOWNTOWNCARY_NC ON INSTAGRAM
The Lantern Parade seems to be becoming a tradition now in Cary, can you tell me about that?
That’s the whole point, that’s why we do it! The beautiful thing about it is going into a community, teaching people how to make their own lanterns, and then building a sense of community. Community building is a really important part of it, so that they feel invested and want to keep having it. Then we build our own traditions rather than having inherited traditions.
What’s it like to be the kickoff to GLOW?
It’s exciting! I mean partly because all of the exhibits in the GLOW festival are so high-tech and so digital, and that’s beautiful, but everything about this is homemade, so it’s like the antithesis to that.
What’s it like being able to do this in the new Downtown Cary Park?
Well it’s exciting, we will see how it goes! It’s very busy and very new. What’s so beautiful about these events is the relationship to public space. The first year here we walked down Academy, and the second year we walked around the Town Hall complex, but there’s something really lovely about using the park, so I am pretty excited. I’m eager to see how we interact with one another in the space.