I Wondered

“Wonder is wonder, a spontaneous feeling variably weighted with fear and longing.” (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011, p. 284)

The meaning of wonder may not be made fully clear by the above statement. However, it generates a question with regard to the relationship between feeling-based experience and wonder in a phenomenological sense. Phenomenology is philosophical investigation of experience that is driven by fascination or under the influence of wonder (van Manen, 2007, p. 11). We can easily see a child being fascinated by wonder that in turn prompts a question he or she may ask. The question is normally concerned with why is there something doing this or that. It seems simple but its answer can be very difficult to find.

Will wonder be fascinated by an adult living in this world as a creative practitioner? If so, why is wonder important to creative practice?

As a textile artist and a designer, I could say that wonder can influence a creative practitioner similarly to how it does to a child. According to Kingwell (2000, p. 85), wonder exposes a threefold structure: wonderer, the wonderful and wondering. While I am the wonderer and the world is the wonderful, my acts of experiencing the wonderful world is the wondering. Wonder encourages me to contemplate the world surrounding me. “Wonder invites not only investigation of the world, but also reflection on the subject who experiences it, and on the experience itself,” says Kingwell (2000, p. 89).

In this essay, I wonder about wonder and its consequences to my creation and everyday experiences. I seek to find an answer to my (possibly philosophical) question of why and how wonder is involved in my personal and professional experiences in relation to space and time.

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Suggested Citation: Nimkulrat, N. (2014). I Wondered. Stimulus Respond, Spring 2014, 30-34.