One Santa Monica artist has found a way to let everyone celebrate the Santa Monica Pier Centennial all year round. Jon Aeon’s Figure 8 Calendar, Pacific Wheel Edition, is a booklet containing sumptuous photographs of the Pacific Park Ferris Wheel, combined with calendar months in a figure 8 configuration rather than the traditional box shape.
Aeon, a local artist who lives and works in a loft at the Santa Monica Art Colony, created the calendar using time-lapse photos of the Ferris Wheel taken at the Wheel’s rededication ceremony of May 28, 2008.
The calendar runs 15 months, beginning with September 2009 because it is the Pier’s centennial month. Ferris Wheel photos are arranged on one facing page, while the opposite pages feature the “flow-chart” figure 8 calendar pages. In each month’s “8,” the 15th or 16th day of the month can be found at the center of the image, with Day 1 above it to the right and the days moving counter-clockwise around to the center and then down clockwise and around to day 30 or 31 (or in February’s case, 28).
This configuration was inspired, says Aeon, by the Analemma (pronounced Ana-lema), an astronomical term for the pedestal of a sundial and also for the Sun’s path in the sky over the course of a year.
“A lot of people don’t realize that every globe has the Analemma on it,” says Aeon. “It is one of those lost concepts that turn on a figure 8.” He explains that a figure 8 is the symbol of “time and infinity” and that the
Analemma and the figure 8 symbol “appear to be born of the same thought, perhaps a message in a bottle from the ancients.”
Aeon feels that his work as an artist has always been concerned with time and its “spaciousness.” “Time is something that is in the moment and yet it can be expansive or contracted.”
He has also created an “interactive” version of the Pacific Wheel Calendar that can be overlaid on any of the other traditional configurations from other cultures.
The Aeon Figure 8 Calendar Pacific Wheel Edition (September 2009-December 2010) is available for $19.95 at aeon.com or at Amazon.com. Fine art prints of the Pacific Wheel series are also available for purchase. Exhibitions may be arranged by contacting Jon Aeon at jonaeon7@gmail.com. Jon Aeon will also be opening his studio to the public during the upcoming Pico Art Walk on October 17.
