The sun set by 5:20 p.m. on January 10, typical of a midwinter evening, leaving the town of Cary blanketed in cold and darkness — except within Downtown Cary Park.
The paths throughout the park blazed with light and music during the Under the Silver Moon community lantern parade. Hundreds of illuminated paper lanterns, held aloft by local residents, snaked through the park, transforming the dark landscape into “a river of light.”
The parade’s carnival-like atmosphere of celebration and creativity battled back the doldrums of January, leaving participants hopeful and invigorated for the year ahead.
“Parade has become a vehicle for creativity and collaboration and bringing people together from all different walks of life, all different persuasions, all different ethnicities and cultural backgrounds to celebrate together,” says artist Gowri Savoor, who helped to found Under the Silver Moon with her husband, Angelo Arnold, in collaboration with the Town of Cary. 2026 marked the fifth year of this annual event.
Artist Gowri Savoor in her Cary studio
The couple share the artistry and celebration of lantern building and parade around the country and beyond through their organization A River of Light.
“I had an opportunity very early on in my community arts career to work with different arts organizations in England who would have community workshops in all kinds of parade and processional work. It might be making lanterns, costumes, banners, flags, or instruments. And then we’d come together and have parades in the streets. It was a big tradition in England,” Gowri says.
In 2006, Gowri moved from the UK to Vermont for a residency at Vermont Studio Center, but did not find the same tradition existed there.
“When I came to Vermont, there was nothing like that. … There were no events taking place in the winter which were free and family friendly and generated this sense of magic that people would contribute to. … I realized I had to find a way to do this work.”
Partnering with schools and towns, Gowri began teaching lantern-making workshops and facilitating lantern parades, first in Vermont, then expanding to Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Missouri, Wyoming, and eventually North Carolina.
“Lanterns are vessels of light. So the outside vessel is anything that you want it to be, and that is the beauty of it. You’re literally creating something three dimensional from sticks and paper and glue. … It’s just an incredible experience and very empowering.
“It isn’t just for lantern parades in the winter. We might have been creating lanterns for a Diwali festival, or it might have been to create gigantic fruits to celebrate a healthy eating campaign — these are actual projects! — there are so many different ways in which you can use lanterns,” Gowri says.
Gowri and Angelo moved to Cary in 2020 — “I loved the multiculturalism of the town, the amount of arts that were here, and the amount of outdoor spaces” — and not long after partnered with Denise Dickens, public art supervisor and curator of exhibitions for the Town of Cary, to start a lantern parade tradition in the Triangle.
Denise was drawn to Gowri from their first introduction, impressed with her communication skills and professionalism, as well as the magic of the lantern parades.
Gowri and her husband Angelo Arnold founded A River of Light, an organization that shares the artistry of lantern building and facilitates lantern parades around the country, including Cary’s Under the Silver Moon lantern parade.
“She was presenting something with these lanterns that I thought was just magical at a time when it was pretty dark,” recalls Denise.
Despite still being under threat of covid, workshops through Town of Cary Parks Recreation & Cultural Resources — safely distanced and masked — began in late 2021, and the first parade occurred in 2022 on Academy Street.
“It was an attractive prospect to come out at night and celebrate in the street, because it was safe and outdoors. It was an opportunity to have some joy and create a little magic,” says Gowri.
“Being a really dark time of the year and a dark time that we were all living through, I thought, ‘This could really be so uplifting for people.’ And it continues to be. It really is a very hopeful event,” says Denise.
In advance of the 2026 parade, Gowri taught seven different lantern-making workshops, ranging from a two-hour star construction for ages 8 and up to a three-day experience fabricating large-scale structures with moving parts.
“The workshops, for me, that’s the meat of the event, because I love to teach and I love to share these skills with people. The parade is the cherry on top.
“It is very joyful for me to see that many people come to workshops year after year. … I try each year to have a new lantern or a variation on a theme of the new lantern, so there’s always something new to try,” says Gowri.
“Seeing kids and parents, adults, or seniors walking out of a lantern making workshop — it just brings me joy. It’s very uplifting,” says Denise. “It’s the reason you do this work. You realize that arts are transformative and can really elevate us in times when we need it and bring us closer together.”
Lanterns of all kinds are welcome at Under the Silver Moon lantern parade, not just those crafted at the workshops.
“The most joyful part is the level of creativity and skill and quality of the lanterns that people are bringing is phenomenal. It makes my heart very, very happy to see that energy around wanting to build, having the motivation to design and build something and then share it with friends and strangers in these public spaces,” Gowri says.
The lantern-making workshops represent one of many ways that Gowri helps others explore creativity. From her early art career shadowing a teaching artist in the UK, Gowri discovered a love for instruction.
“It’s a wonderful feeling to know that you’ve created work in your studio and you’re showing that and people are complimenting you, but there’s something very profound about helping somebody else to find that creative spark in themselves,” she says.
Artist Gowri Savoor leads Cary’s Under the Silver Moon lantern parade, an event that has grown in creativity and attendance since its beginnings in 2022. In advance of the parade, Gowri led workshops in partnership with the Town of Cary teaching participants how to build their own paper lanterns.
A teaching artist, Gowri explains, is different from an art teacher.
“It’s really about teaching through your art form. … You’re really helping people to find that creativity within themselves and to do an activity or an experience through the art form that you are practiced in.”
In the early years of hosting lantern workshops, Gowri realized that resources and training for developing community programs were not common, which led her to found Teaching Artists Connect, a nonprofit that offers professional development programs for educators and artists.
“When I started up, there was no advice or training courses.” Running a workshop involved lots of trial and error, experimenting with different activities and methods to engage participants. Gowri admits that sometimes, she’d fail.
“We started Teaching Artists Connect as a way to help artists to increase their skills, to build their confidence, and to understand how to teach through the arts,” she says.
Teaching Artists Connect helps professionals explore questions such as: “What kind of strategies do you use? How do you work with different populations? How do you organize your time and plan? How do you set up partnerships that are successful? How do you run a business in art?” she lists.
“I recognize how artists view the world can be a little different — through a lens of curiosity and discovery and rising to challenges, being flexible and adaptable. … When you can put those skills to use, as teaching artists do, you can have a powerful effect on people.”
Cary’s Under the Silver Moon lantern parade is an uplifting carnival-like event, brightening
one of the darkest days of the year.
Denise adds: “Gowri is the real deal when it comes to a teaching artist. To have her in the community to share and excite other artists … to do workshops and events where she can share her knowledge base with other makers is really important.
“Working with her has been a joy, and she has brought so much joy to a huge cross section of the community.”
Gowri was born and grew up in the Midlands of England. Looking back, she knew she wanted to be an artist, remembering making art as young as 4 years old. Gowri worked in graphic design and advertising as a young professional before becoming a full-time artist in 2000, starting her work on parade art soon after that. Throughout her career, Gowri’s mediums have included painting, sculpture, 3D printed works, drawing, and, of course, paper lanterns.
It wasn’t until 2019 that Gowri’s “big passion project” came to her in the form of a hand-drawn girl named Tiny.
“Tiny is a paper doll who has adventures,” she explains. Those adventures are chronicled through illustrations and stories which Gowri calls Tiny Hero Tales.
Tiny Hero Tales, a series of pen-and-paper illustrations by Gowri Savoor, chronicles the adventures of a paper doll named Tiny.
Follow along with Tiny’s adventures in the digital diary My Tiny Beautiful Life on tinyherotales.com
It takes a specific sepia pen to achieve the fantastical style of Tiny Hero Tales, where every line is intentional.
“There’s something really honest about the line quality, and that is something that is really important to me to preserve, to get that feeling right.”
In a series of drawings, Tiny explores a whimsical world full of nature, animal friends, and cozy settings, forming a visual diary called My Tiny Beautiful Life, which includes hundreds of stories that can be found on tinyherotales.com.
“It brings me an immense amount of joy recreating that place of magic that I had as a child, that I had in reading.”
Whether it be pen and paper illustrations, 3D lanterns, music, or dance, art is a universal language, Gowri says.
“It transcends language. It transcends culture. It transcends differences. … It is something that is innate in every one of us.
“It’s not only joyful, but it’s healing and it’s empowering. Art builds confidence. It helps with critical thinking and problem solving. It helps us to understand one another. It builds empathy. … That is the power of art and why we need it so much in our communities.”
gowrisavoor.com
@gowrisavoor
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