A Farewell to WNDR

by Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.

 

The Fortune Teller at WNDR.

I’d always meant to go down to the Gaslamp to visit the museum called WNDR, since opportunities to experience wonder--even without its vowels--have always been attractive to me. But somehow I never managed to get there until I found out they were leaving San Diego September 1^st.

So on what turned out to be an unusually stormy day in late August, Maurice and I made our way downtown from North County and into the WNDR museum.

There weren’t a lot of people there on that rainy Thursday, but there were some of all ages interacting with the changing colors, shapes and sounds on the two floors of installations, expressing their own curiosity and creativity, getting their fortunes told, leaving their personal words of wisdom alongside many others and (like us) taking photos.

 There are other WNDRS still open in Chicago and Boston, but since you can no longer visit WNDR San Diego in person, we’re sharing some of our favorite visuals here.

 

This large room was WNDR’s point of entry: intricate patterns of light on the floor kept changing as we walked or danced around, and mirrored walls reflected the changes.  Like most of the installations, this one included music, and we enjoyed the experience so much that we went back again before leaving.

 In another room, there were cascades of colored fiber-optic lights we could walk through and around. Fun!

 

WONDR’s Light House, in its black-and-white time, with me on the inside and Maurice on the outside looking in.

A couple, changing the images they were seeing on the screen with their movements.

The two of us, immersing ourselves in mirrors.

The Wisdom Project: A chance to leave some wise words of your own on the wall. I’m pointing to mine.

 

A young visitor, getting into the large-scale pinboard sculpture in WNDR’s lobby.

 We definitely enjoyed our visit and wish San Diego’s WNDR-workers Bon VYGE wherever they go from here.

Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has been writing about arts and lifestyles in San Diego County for over a dozen years. You can reach her at  hew2@sbcglobal.net