Wide Awake Creative is a San Antonio experiential design studio with a simple founding premise. Paloma Cortez started it in 2018 with Pamela Rachél after more than a decade in design and production, and she now runs it solo. The work that came out of it is some of the most psychologically grounded in the Hopscotch lineup, built on a belief that strangers can be intimate with each other if you give them the right excuse.
A place to play, experiment, and push beyond the expected.
Cortez's background is the agency world, with time at multicultural agencies in San Antonio and Chicago (FCB, and campaigns for Wendy's, Coors Light, the NBA, and General Mills), and she is co-author of the 2021 children's book "Camilla la Magica Makes Tamales." In April 2021 Wide Awake produced In Living Pixels, a free pop-up at San Antonio's Aztec Theatre co-presented with Pabst Brewing Company and featuring seven local artists, including "Let's Meet Up," built from 18 mirrored security domes. Wide Awake was also one of four local San Antonio artists in Hopscotch's original October 2020 lineup, which makes the studio part of Hopscotch San Antonio's founding identity.
Secrets is a floor-to-ceiling black exhibit, soundproofed, with two private recording booths and six vintage payphones. In the booth, you record a secret. At the payphones, you pick up a receiver and hear someone else's, whispered by a stranger who knew they would never be identified. They range from mundane to devastating. Groups get quiet in here, and people stay at the phones longer than they planned. The concept came from an article by Grant H. Brenner, MD, on how keeping secrets harms psychological health; the exhibit is built to let them out. Portland got its own version in 2023: Secret Garden, where written secrets bloom through the space like pollen and umbrellas become listening stations.
The content is entirely guest-made, and new secrets are recorded every day. Secrets is never the same exhibit twice.
