Jeanne Fleming is an American Celebration Artist from New York City, who organized the Harbor Festival Fair in 1986, the Official Land Celebration for the Centennial of the Statue of Liberty and who is currently director of New York's Village Halloween Parade. Fleming uses pageant-sized puppets – giant rod puppets operated by teams of puppeteers. For Liberty's party in 1986, she "...invited all the great statues of the world to her birthday party and created giant puppets to represent them. Each one arrived accompanied by native music," Fleming explained. The centennial extravaganza lasted three days and drew 12 million people, and is said to have been the largest public event in the US as of that date. Parade director Fleming took responsibility for continuing the Village Halloween Parade in 1985 after its founding artistic director, Ralph Lee, decided to no longer run the event. Fleming had been working with Lee since 1983 and had been a participant in the parade for several years prior to that. In addition to producing new puppets and processional elements, Fleming planned for its future growth by working with five Manhattan neighborhoods' community boards, local police, residents, sponsors, schools, and community organizations. The parade currently draws two million spectators and sixty thousand participants. For the Halloween Parade, Fleming commissions puppet artists to develop and depict annual themes that explore the holiday's historic origins as well as concepts of its psychic, spiritual, and mythical meanings, focusing on selected aspects from year to year. Themes often reflect the notion of Halloween as a night of transformation, as well as ideas of self-expression and community. In 2001, New York City government and police allowed Fleming to produce the second large-scale event in NYC to take place after the September 11 attacks (the first was the Columbus Day Parade on October 8). Parade puppet designer Sophia Michahelles developed the theme of "Phoenix Rising” (a reference to the mythical bird that rises up out of its own ashes). For the event, Michahelles created a giant illuminated Phoenix surrounded by lanterns representing the towers. Other work Celebration Artist and Producer, Jeanne Fleming and her company Wonderworks have been designing and producing programs, festivals, commercial and non-commercial events since 1970. At 25, Fleming was awarded an experimental grant from the National Endowment for the Arts which she used to create and direct the first regional cooperative arts program in the nation. Under