Synchronicity is the often subtle, sometimes momentary or sudden, recognition of the fabric of connectivity present among all things. This acknowledgement comes as an awareness of relationship, a previously unperceived lining up of coordinates, or conjunction of occurrences, which manifests from beyond the known, seen, understood and seems apparently outside our normal sense of time. This realization of synchronicity opens a gateway for the intuitive.

​

Honing one’s senses for awareness to these moments, these revelations of synchronicity, is sought in the quest for a larger understanding of the nature of things or for conformation of the implicit wholeness to life. Certainly, synchronicity can become an effective tool by which artistic intuition makes unpredicted leaps of imagination, discovers unexpected confluences, which often manifests as the cornerstone of an artistic insight, or the work of art.

 

December 22, 1974:

 

In 1974, I was living in Venice, California when old Pacific Ocean Park (P.O.P.) amusement park had just recently been torn down. For months, resulting from the demolition, vast quantities of debris were deposited daily all along the beach with each high tide. Many of us locals found a certain curious delight in examining the day’s record of newly layered treasures. One such day while tracing the edge of the tide’s deposit, I happened upon three pieces of wood left in a rather distinctive configuration. From my perspective, at the bottom was a perfect square chunk of 12”x12” board, above that a second piece of wood was another approximately the same size but in the shape of an exact equilateral triangle and then just above it was three smaller pieces rested on each other forming another equilateral triangle. There it was - a square with two triangles one above the other. I thought: um… there must be a meaning here.

 

At that exact point, I walked perpendicularly away from the ocean, straight across the beach toward Venice Boardwalk. It was a Sunday and many of the local street merchants had set up their wears along the strand. As I approached the boardwalk, I saw a woman acquaintance at a table engaged in reading the Tarot. I greeted her, looked down at the table and saw what was for me a rather unusual deck of cards. Being somewhat familiar with more traditional Tarot, I asked what kind of deck this was. She responded that this was an Egyptian Tarot deck. I ask if she would mind if I looked at them. She said not at all and handed me the deck of cards.

 

Holding them, I split open the deck at random somewhere in the middle and gazed at the face of the card open in my hand. It was the image of a square formed by four crossed sabers and above it two equilateral triangles from similar swords. Underneath this image was the word assigned to the card – Discovery.

 

A sudden clarity quickly traced my steps from Pacific to surprising reading of Tarot and resonated unequivocally. I closed the deck, thanked her, remarking only on their beauty as I handed back the Egyptian cards. Returning directly to my studio just off the boardwalk, I was struck by the symbolism of these specific shapes, which echoed and affirmed dream imagery that had recently informed my videotape (waterpiece) ’74 with its ice cubes and pyramids floating on the surface of a watery mirror. Immediately, I began initial notes for a new series of videotapes, the first of which was entitled “Shapes from the Bone Change” ‘75. This work featured a series of ritual body gestures, signaling with these shapes, a square with two triangles, evoking the reassembling of an essential pattern.​​