Nathaniel Santa Cruz is a retired US Marine Corps veteran, a loving father of four children, and a devoted husband. He is also a passionate artist, writer, and composer. Together with his wife Lisa, they founded “Wondergarten,” dedicated to inspiring children worldwide to embrace kindness and beauty by creating a Waldorf-style kindergarten.
The couple, based in Washington, share a common dream of protecting the “kingdom of childhood” and nurturing childhood imagination, striving to bring ordinary things to life through their original art, including stories, music, and the now popular chalkboard art.
Santa Cruz believes that children raised in a “beautiful environment” will have a foundation to resist the evils of the world, understand the nature of evil, and contribute to combating it.
“In the absence of goodness, one cannot identify evil. Goodness and beauty must come first. It must be the foundation,” Santa Cruz told The Epoch Times.
Wondergarten opened in September 2022 and became a huge success just two weeks later, with Santa Cruz’s meticulously crafted chalkboard art causing a sensation worldwide.
Now, the couple is busy developing early childhood curriculum, including lessons, stories, songs, and “weekly recipe offerings” throughout the year. Santa Cruz emphasizes that educating children requires nurturing their entire lives – their minds, bodies, thoughts, and spirits. This involves providing healthy food and intellectual stimulation as well as nourishing their hearts and souls with kindness and beauty.
“This is our goal at Wondergarten,” he said. “I firmly believe that for children to thrive, they must be surrounded by beauty, not only in art but in all possible forms. Beauty is a necessary condition for the soul’s survival.”
“Today’s society craves beauty. We (at Wondergarten) painstakingly ensure that everything in this environment is beautiful, from toys to utensils, books to bathrooms, and most importantly, my art, songs, and stories.”
The couple’s journey has not been smooth sailing all along.
For much of his life, art was a distant dream for Santa Cruz. As a young man, he found it hard to believe that he could support his family with it, so he joined the Marine Corps at the age of 20. For Mrs. Santa Cruz, art and dance have always been at the forefront, which is what brought them together.
“Two weeks before I left for boot camp, I met my wife Lisa, who was dancing swing at the Century Ballroom in Seattle,” he said. “Although I didn’t believe in love at first sight, our love story was almost a love at first sight.”
Mrs. Santa Cruz, a ballet dancer for Evergreen City Ballet, captivated him. They fell in love a week after meeting each other. For the next three years, the couple maintained a long-distance relationship as Santa Cruz served in the Marine Corps. They got married when he returned in 2015.
“After we got married, we moved to Jacksonville, where I completed the last two years of my military career,” he said.
Despite serving in the Marine Corps, Santa Cruz’s deep yearning for art never waned.
“While in boot camp, I was caught drawing on a briefing,” he said. “My training instructor made me stand up in the middle of an auditorium packed with 400 other recruits and forced me to eat my drawings. I had no choice. I shoved the drawing in my mouth, chewed it, swallowed it, and sat back down. As funny as it is to think of that moment, that wasn’t the first time I had trouble as an artist in the Marine Corps.”
Santa Cruz said that as an artist from the start, he was “uncertain if he could fully utilize his talents” as a Marine. However, things changed when he became a military map maker.
“After basic training, I became a qualified geospatial intelligence analyst, where I learned how to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to create maps,” he said. “I found my place there because most maps looked terrible. I excelled in analysis but also became known for making aesthetically pleasing maps; my maps were worthy of hanging on the wall. I thought I had found my place in society.”
With a Master’s degree in GIS from the University of Washington, Santa Cruz became a project manager for Google Maps, overseeing 10 different teams for the next two years.
During this time, the couple welcomed twin boys. He knew he had to prioritize spending time with the growing family.
“After resigning from my position at Google, I found a job closer to home working as a Senior GIS Analyst at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington,” he said. “Then, 2020 came, and most of my time was spent working from home. But in 2021, as the pandemic subsided, they required everyone to return to work positions, I decided to resign from that position and stay at home with my family, hoping to find remote work – only, after six months of interviews, I found nothing.”
It was during this period of unemployment that Mrs. Santa Cruz and her mother Karen, a public school educator with 40 years of experience, devised a plan: to create a small preschool for their twin sons.
Introducing a Waldorf education concept, where art is an integral part of teaching, ignited Santa Cruz’s passion for art as he got involved in the kindergarten’s work and began creating art.
“I started writing children’s stories weekly, narrating a squirrel discovering four dwarfs in Wondergarten. Then I started composing songs, and soon after, I began illustrating these stories on chalkboards,” he said.
After his artwork was released on Instagram in September 2022, it immediately gained attention, amassing over 100,000 fans. Witnessing their growing online influence, Santa Cruz’s focus shifted.
“At that point, I gave up job searching and began devoting myself full-time to the school,” he said.
For their early childhood curriculum, Santa Cruz began writing, composing music, and drawing chalkboard illustrations.
“It was an opportunity for me to create again as an artist – not for myself, but for my children,” he said. “I continued writing stories, which I later named ‘The Dwarfs of Wondergarten,’ composing music for the curriculum, and depicting scenes from my stories on the chalkboard every month.”
The couple shares their work online, astonishing a global audience. Recently, they posted another chalkboard drawing in February that went viral online.
“It garnered over 60 million views,” Santa Cruz said. “To put that number into perspective, Lisa said, only 19 million people watched the Oscars this year. More people saw my chalkboard art than watched the Oscars.”
While creating the curriculum and sharing kindness and beauty with the world, the Santa Cruz family also has a unique opportunity to build a strong community. They hope that this curriculum will help children cultivate a love and longing for all things good, true, and beautiful.
As an educator, Santa Cruz believes that “imaginative children will become creative adults, and creative adults will change the world.”
He said, “Nurturing healthy, flourishing imagination is one of the most precious gifts we can give children because even in the darkest times, a kind heart and a beautiful soul will shine brightly and be seen by others.”
“Through my art, I hope to restore kindness and beauty to families worldwide and inspire children and adults to remember and revel in the purity and innocence of childhood. Sparking a new renaissance of art in our culture, aimed at restoring the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty as objective values in society.”
The Santa Cruz family’s mission statement is: in everything we do, we seek kindness, beauty, and truth with gratitude, love, and respect for a greater glory to God.
“This is what we do, this is our role,” Santa Cruz said. “Everything we do in our family, business, and actions aligns with this statement. Wondergarten, and all that we have and will continue to create for it, is to extend these values from our home to our society.”
The couple aims to restore kindness, beauty, and truth to the world.
“If we achieve that, Wondergarten will have completed its mission,” Santa Cruz said.
With their increasing global influence, the couple is diligently working to complete their curriculum and other products. Santa Cruz plans to auction some of his chalkboard drawings to help raise funds to build Wondergarten and campus, which he says will be the “foundation for nurturing the next generation of world-changers.”