Artist Statement

Chantelle Rytter and the Krewe of the Grateful Gluttons’ artistic mission is to create open participatory platforms for creative play in public spaces.

Parades are where a community sees itself. Lantern Parades are where a community sees itself as volumes of light, moving to the same rhythm, through a shared space. They believe this experience and the memory of it have a lasting positive impact on how people feel about their public space and who they share it with. When people lay down joyful shared memories together in a place, it is a blessing on that place.

Rytter and team create large-scale lantern puppets because they believe in the experiential value of real encounters with fantastical creatures. When people encounter and interact with art beyond their imagination in a familiar space, it expands their capacity to imagine what is possible there.

Rytter hopes their work serves as a ritual reminder that people have the collective agency to regularly create wondrous experiences for themselves and their community. As traditions, participatory creative celebrations reinforce the belief in the extraordinary nature of collective character and the place we call home.