Hundreds gathered at Hilton Head beach Saturday for annual lantern parade. Check it out
Lowcountry critters of all shapes and sizes lit up a single-mile stretch of beach just after sunset Saturday on Hilton Head for the annual lantern parade.
Long before the sun had even set, the beach was crowded with hundreds of people either heading toward Alder Lane to line up for the parade or setting up chairs in the sand to wait for marchers and their lanterns to go by. The event, which caps Crescendo Hilton Head’s arts and cultural events for October and November, began in 2019 as a way to celebrate the history and ecology on Hilton Head. This year, lanterns of a stingray, a shark, egrets, an alligator and, of course, plenty of sea turtles could be seen marching down the beach.
Among those attracted to the annual parade this year was 11-year-old Ella Meadows, who had her lantern idea, a dragon, cooking in her brain since attending the event last year. Ella took inspiration from online photos of how to construct her dragon but took creative liberties when it came to the dragon’s tail and wings. The battery packs, she said, were the heaviest part.
“The marching was long, and tiring,” she admitted.
Susan McCarthy, who came all the way from California, helped her friend, carpenter Jim Majewski, build a Blue Fine Tuna out of rice paper for the parade.
“It took a day to make and two days planning,” Majewski said. “So, five hours to make, but we had dinner in between.”
The two, along with Majewski’s wife, Bonnie, and a group of friends, had gotten to the beach early to scope out a good spot. Staked in the sand was a small post holding up the tuna to make it look like it was hanging off a fishing rod. Majewski has been attending the parade on Hilton Head since it began, but this was his first year making something to participate in the festivities. When deciding what he should make, Majewski said he took inspiration from years of fishing locally on Hilton Head.
“It came together,” he said. “I hadn’t used this, rice paper, I think, since I was a kid in the 70s and I would do mod podge with my parents.”
As the celebrations came to a close, drones buzzed overhead and the troupe from Full Spectrum Studio on Hilton Head began to pack up their snacks and lanterns. The studio, dreamed up by Andrea Hattler Bramson and Judy Russell, is Hilton Head’s first studio dedicated to artists with disabilities. Saturday at the parade, the studio’s volunteers had several artists with them, including Allison Good and Victoria Bramson, to cheer on their lanterns which were featured in the parade.
“This group changed my life,” said Good. “I met all of them [at the Hilton Head Farmer’s Market] and they said come on down to the studio. I got hooked.”
“She can’t get rid of us now,” Hattler Bramson joked.
The purpose of the studio, and events like the lantern parade, said studio volunteer Ann Walsh, is to give an opportunity to adults with disabilities to be creative and express themselves artistically.
“Allison is the exact person we want to find us,” she said. “We are the lucky ones.”
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