Midtown Artist Leads A Solo St. Patrick's Day Parade

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — For the second consecutive year, no crowds gathered to celebrate St. Patrick's Day this week, but people who passed by Fifth Avenue on Wednesday may have noticed one woman pushing a cart along the typical parade route, piled high with festive items.

That lone marcher was Suzanne Broughel, an Irish-American artist who, starting in 2016, began scavenging along the edges of each year's parade, picking up the plastic hats and green feathers and shamrock-shaped sunglasses that the revelers had tossed to the ground.

"I’ve been accumulating this with the thought of making art out of it but I hadn’t quite figured it out yet," she said. "Then, this year, with the pandemic, it became a little more poignant."

On Wednesday, with no crowds to speak of, Broughel decided to assemble her collected objects onto a rolling cart before hauling it to the route's starting point at 44th Street — a pilgrimage that she dubbed the "St. Patrick's Day Detritus Parade."

"I found that when I put it all in a big mass, it became very visually interesting," said Broughel, who lives in Hell's Kitchen and often incorporates found objects into her work. "It became this sort of visual spectacle."

She turned heads as she moved up Fifth Avenue toward the parade's terminus at the American Irish Historical Society near East 80th Street. As she passed St. Patrick's Cathedral, she had a chance encounter with Buddy the Rat, the performance artist whom Broughel has admired for his strange, viral subway antics, and who was in the middle of his own holiday project.

"We had this great conversation," she said.

The other items Broughel has collected from past years' parades include a flier for a Dropkick Murphys concert, a string of plastic shamrock lights, green plastic whistles, a feather boa and a cheerleader's pom-pom colored to match the Irish flag.

Broughel, who describes her art as anti-racist and rooted in social justice, said the annual project has helped her grapple with her Irish-American identity, and warmed her feelings toward a parade that she formerly judged for its sometimes-conservative politics.

"It made me get closer to the parade and not paint everyone with a broad brush," she said.

If the coronavirus subsides by next March, she hopes to find herself once again among the crowds on Fifth Avenue.

"I went from wanting to completely avoid the St. Patrick’s Parade to really missing it," she said. "Having the pandemic makes me appreciate these gatherings more."