‘Wheels and Wings’ parade lanterns emerge from willow, paper, and tape

December 4, 2025 | By Sam Stout | Community News Service 

The interior of Waterbury’s Brookside Primary School gym is usually reserved for basketball games and physical education classes. But for a handful of days last month, it served a different purpose: a workspace for the River of Light — Waterbury’s upcoming annual community lantern parade, happening this Saturday, Dec. 6. 

Leslie Berger with her Richard Scarry-inspired lantern frame. Courtesy photo

Each parade is an inclusive, whole-community affair where people of all ages build lanterns and march through Waterbury with them. 

Primary school art teacher MK Monley with colleague and visiting artist Gowri Savoor ran the first River of Light Parade in December 2010 as a small school event with children marching with their handmade lanterns from the school to Rusty Parker Memorial Park downtown. 

Though Savoor moved to North Carolina in 2020, Monley and fellow Waterbury artists Sarah-Lee Terrat and Mame McKee have kept the tradition alive. 

For Mckee, a long-time art educator, the parade serves as a symbol of community resilience. With all the turmoil and darkness in today’s world, she said she sees it as a powerful way to bring together her community. 

Monley agreed. “It’s a community event that brings people together just for the fun of it,” she said. “It's just something that feeds your soul. Especially in dark times, our souls need to be fed.” 

Monley, Terrat and McKee co-founded MakerSphere, a community art studio, in 2018. Terrat worked as an artist in New York before moving to Burlington at the age of 29 to work at Ben & Jerry’s as a designer. McKee founded the Seminary Art Center in Waterbury, bringing her talents in pottery to the workshops. 

With each year’s parade are accompanying workshops beforehand. Their primary purposes: to guide parade participants in bringing to life their whimsical ideas for lanterns, to provide the materials needed, and to teach new artists the ways of the craft. 

Each parade has a theme. This year, it’s “wheels and wings”— so anything flying or rolling goes. 

“Someone had been asking that we have transportation as a theme. To broaden that, we expanded it to Wheels and Wings this year,” said Monley. 

A view of the lantern workshop from above the gym. Courtesy photo

The November 8 workshop was reserved for adults and teens looking to build their lantern alongside others. Though many of the participants at the workshop were already experienced lantern builders, some were not. But most artists were willing to provide a helping hand. 

On a recent Saturday, tables scattered throughout the gym were arrayed with coffee filters, rattan, glue, willow stems and other craft materials. Though the location has varied, these workshops have been going strong for the last 16 years, Terrat said. 

Twenty-three members of the Waterbury community gathered around these tables, sometimes small-talking, mostly discussing craft. Two more workshops were hosted at Brookside, one on November 15 for families and one on the 16th for all ages. Fifteen and 50 people showed up for each, respectively. 

While some lanterns can be carried by one person, others are heavy enough that they need to be mounted on a backpack frame with bamboo poles. Others, like a multiple-part dragon lantern, require several people to carry them. 

Lanterns are framed by willow stems, which are then wrapped with gigantic coffee filters. Willow is sourced from Fairfield, Vermont, and England, Monley said. The coffee filters were provided by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters before they moved out of Waterbury. 

Lantern workshop and parade organizers (left to right) MK Monley, Sarah-Lee Terrat and Mame McKee. Photo by Sam Stout

To build lanterns, the workshop participants took the willow limbs and joined them at an angle, securing the joint with tape. This was done again and again, until the frame was finished. Then it is papered with the filters, and ropes of LEDs are run through. Rattan, a fiberlike material similar to wicker that’s typically used in basket making, can be used to shape the frame for bigger lanterns, Monley said. 

Lanterns that require even more support can be reinforced with bamboo. 

“It’s what I call barefoot engineering,” Terrat said. “You really have to think about how this is going to hold up, how you're going to carry it.” 

To add color to the lanterns, artists either paint the filter or use colored tissue. 

One participant, Leslie Berger, built a Richard Scarry-inspired apple-and-car lantern. 

“Richard Scarry vehicles are the best,” Berger said, referring to the children’s author-illustrator famous for whimsical, detailed drawings including surprising vehicle designs. “They’re so crazy and imaginative.” 

Other participants designed lanterns based on more abstract ideas, like a DNA helix. 

For Monley, who runs the workshops, they offer an opportunity to teach the craft she’s passionate about. 

Before she was an art teacher, Monley taught special education at the then-Thatcher Brook Primary School; the school was renamed Brookside in 2021, the year Monley retired. Working with children is a large part of why she has run the event for so long, she said. In recent years, she’s continued to spend time at the primary school, working with current art teacher Rachael Wells in teaching students from pre-K through fourth grade how to build their own lanterns. The entire school participates in lantern-making, she said. 

When the River of Light parades started, the turnout was small: Terrat estimated only a little over 100 people showed up. But they persisted and ran it the next year, and the next after that. 

“It was small, but delightful and magical,” she said. 

A large dragon structure comes together during the lantern workshop. Photo by Sam Stout

This year’s parade will start at Brookside Primary School at 5 p.m. It will be joined by Sambatucada and Brass Balagan, Burlington’s respective samba and brass bands, and a group of student drummers from Crossett Brook Middle School as well as middle schoolers who also have built lanterns in their art classes. The roughly half-mile route travels down Stowe Street to North Main Street, ending at Dascombe Rowe Park. 

At the field, there will be a bonfire and hot chocolate. Fire spinners from Cirque de Fuego from Jericho will perform as well. Children usually go sledding if it snows, Monley said. Terrat expects over 2,000 people to watch, and a little under 1,000 to participate.  Parade information is online on the MakerSphere website.

The participants at the Brookside gym workshop said they look forward to marching in the parade. As a group of them gathered to lay out all of the pieces of the large dragon lantern, its original three designers stood in the middle, proud of their creation.