sixoneeight

Welcome to sixoneeight.org – the web portal of Mariona and Aaron Jones. A collective of our web and print design, as well various photographic, graphic art, musical and written musings, this site offers a representation of our identity across many mediums. By using the medium of the internet to exhibit our various other “studios”, we manifest a mathematical squaring of our creations. This conversion of art to math finds its reciprocal in the origin of our web domain; sixoneeight.

Literally, 618 is our telephone area code, but figuratively we have derived it from the Golden Ratio of 1:1.618=0.618:1.

‘’Shapes proportioned according to the golden ratio have long been considered aesthetically pleasing in Western cultures, and the golden ratio is still used frequently in art and design, suggesting a natural balance between symmetry and asymmetry. The ancient Pythagoreans, who defined numbers as expressions of ratios (and not as units as is common today), believed that reality is numerical and that the golden ratio expressed an underlying truth about existence”. (taken from www.wikipedia.org)

After working on pro-bono projects for a while I have finally decided that my time has become too precious and no longer can I continue giving away my sleeping hours. I have learned a lot but it is time for me to move on…

This is a link to The Women’s Center site. The Women’s Center is a non-profit organization that helps women, men and children that suffer from domestic violence and sexual assault. Their motto is: “Supporting Survivors of Violence and Promoting a Safer Community”.

In order to develop The Women’s Center web site I had meetings and interviews with the members of the organizations and listened to their concerns and suggestions in order to understand their necessities. After drawing a map with the organization’s interactions with the clients, community, volunteers, donors, service providers, government, etc., I was able to design the site and information architecture, taking into consideration the users hierarchy of needs. The most important lesson I learned during this project was to figure out what the client needed rather than what they wanted.

It was a fascinating process to elaborate a design brief and present it to the organization and community in addition to designing a site that had the functionality to allow the visitors to find the necessary tools to recover, donate, volunteer, etc…

I will be posting soon a link to another project that is going live at the end of the month for which I got a small portion of a grant from the state. This project promotes artistic expression as therapy and encourages women to empower themselves through art. It also features a book in which I have a silkscreen artwork. The project featured is homage to life.

Two weeks ago we found a kitty that seemed lost in the woods while we were on our daily walk around the neighborhood. He was not letting us near him so we decided to leave him there in case he was from somebody in the area. A week later we found him again and this time he came running to us and wanted us to pet and hold him, so we took him home. We kept him a couple days in our garage, gave him food and water, made him a comfortable bed and cuddled him a whole lot.

Our neighbour happens to be a veterinarian and she said we could take him to check for Feline Leukimia and Feline Imunodeficiency Virus (aids) and she would give him his shots so he could have a healthy life. We took him on Saturday to the vet and we were received warmly and told that the kitty seamed healthy at the first glance and also was very cuddly as he was constantly making kitty biscuits. We felt really happy to leave him with them and went on for breakfast. A couple hours later the vet called and told us he was FIV positive and ask what would we want to do with him. It was so devastating, and we felt so attached to the little guy that I went ahead and said to give him all the proper treatment and shots so he could be an outdoor kitty. We own two cats and we could not have him with them because they could also become infected if they fought.

Today I called my neighbor and told her I would not be able to take care of the kitty. I was too afraid of having him with my other indoor cats or outside because of the contagiousness of the disease. I keep thinking it’s not his fault as he was born with the disease. I wish I would of had the guts to put him to sleep but he was not suffering and he could live in a household with just one cat. I really hope my neighbour will find a place for him to live. He is not going to make it outside through the winter as his immune system is low and he would not be able to survive a cold or any other infection.

If you are interested in giving this little guy a chance please leave us a comment with your telephone number or contact us so we can get intouch.

This is a project for which I have designed the logo and Web site. It has been a fun and educative process as I had the pleasure to work with two very knowledgeable and talented persons which I admire and respect. The art4empowerment project helps persons communicate through artistic expression and allows them to use art as therapy. This is their mission statement: “The mission of art4empowerment is to empower women through art. We focus on women who have experienced abuse or domestic violence. We believe that everyone can benefit from art making for healing, self-knowledge and empowerment.”.

The Web site features the “Art of survival: women, healing and the arts.” book, art galleries with the artwork developed during the art4empowerment sessions and useful resources. In the book there is featured my silkscreen “Homage to Life” and also a small caption with my artist statement and description of the artwork.

To learn more please visit the site at http://www.art4e.org

Friday morning, Dec. 29th we awaken to find this little goober sleeping on our front porch. He appears to possibly be Tom’s; our other outdoor cat’s son. He certainly didn’t mind him hangin’ around and they share this mannerism and look in the eyes that just makes you think they’re of the same blood. Cut to a week later and we’ve decided to bring him “in”to our family; inside the compound amongst us and Oscar and Lucas. They are taking to him, slowly. Obviously, they have some catching up to do as we are taken.

He’s one of the more exotic looking cats we’ve seen. It appears he’s half Siamese/ half domestic short hair. We’ve given him the name Arthur, though I’m sure we’ll give hime many more nicknames as time progresses.

And oh yeah, we took him to vet and he got a clean bill of health. No FIV, no leukemia, a few ear mites, but hopefully many more healthy years now than he would have had outside…

If you want to see more pictures of Arthur or our other cats you can check them out in our flickr cat set. You can get there by clicking on Arthur’s picture or here.

Yesterday we found out we are having a boy. October 22nd is the due date but I am really hoping that it is born in Halloween, that would be so cool. That way we get to celebrate the birthdays with Halloween parties. Halloween is my favorite time of the year.

We are going to call him Floyd Franklin after a great uncle of Aaron who was an engineering student and dropped out of the university to volunteer in WWII. He went in a humanitarian mission as a pilot and flew from Burma to China to transport food for the Chinese since the Japanese had them isolated and they were starving. His plane was lost in the Himalayan mountains during a storm and they never found him. The weirdest thing is that the due date we have is the same day that his ancestor was born, he was born in 1917 so 90 years ago.

So now with another boy to the family we will be 6 boys and a girl, 4 of them cats… I wonder what they are going to think about a baby. They do not seam to like other people’s children but when they have one here at home 24/7 I wonder how they are going to react. I hope they get along well since I always grew up with animals and they were my best friends.

Well we are parents… After one month at the hospital with PROM (Premature Rupture of Membranes), Ian was born at 32 weeks. He was born August 27th at 8:50pm during a lunar eclipse.
I was in labor from Sunday around 10pm until Monday when I finally told the Midwife to come and see me. At that point (6pm) I was already 8cm and ready to have the baby. I thought I just had a backache from laying in bed for so long but I was actually in labor, they said I must have high pain tolerance… Aaron was great during labor and delivery, he helped me to breath and held my hand when I needed him.

The birth was all natural and so beautiful, it is an amazing thing to give birth, so empowering. I had a great support team, a Doula, a Midwife, and an amazing nurse that we have made aunt to Ian.
We left the hospital 14 hours after the birth since I really needed to see the kitties and come home to rest in my own bed without nurses coming in to check my vitals every 3 hours…
Ian stayed at the NICU for a couple weeks and recovered super fast on mother’s milk. He is a strong little guy and has been developing just like any 5 month old baby. We are super delighted with him and look forward to feeding him with a spoon at the end of next month when he will be 6 months already.

There are lots of pictures of the little guy on our flickr site, check it out!
After 4 months not sleeping more than 3 hours in a row this 5th month has been glorious. Ian is sleeping a lot and just wakes up for some milk and falls right back to sleep. He is usually a slug bug in the mornings until 9 or 10 which offers me time to get ready for the day.