In the distant past, alignments of the planets (Sandrow’s Untitled Observations May 15 commencing 1:30am Self Portrait spacetime Conjunction of Five Planets)  were seen as portents of things to come. The sun, moon and Galileo Galilei were subjects in Sandrow’s study Untitled Observations spacetime (2001 - 2007), when her path crossed with the Padovana white crested cockeral (Note 1) on Shinnecock Hills.  He followed Sandrow home, where he roosted in a cedar tree.

Hearing his cock a doodle do at dawn, she awoke to see the moon setting in the west, sun rising in the eastern sky.  And his flying to the ground: Sandrow followed taking stills and video as he foraged for food, looked for hens.

A crowing rooster is “believed” to herald the “dawn” of a new day: their chance encounter was a pivotal moment in Sandrow’s life. And in her work, the role of chance became a central experience as it had been for the artist who’s work first engaged Sandrow as a young girl. “I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.” Marcel Duchamp installed (1952) “LARGE GLASS”  at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in a gallery that also included “Rotorelief (Optical disc)” prints: where Sandrow found her place in life engaged in the creative process. Making art reflecting life and the natural world her prism through which to live. “Duchamp delighted in the fact that the glass shattered while being transported, the jagged cracks further confounding and fragmenting the object's chance encounter with the real world. Rather than offering escape into a story or environment, the environment is framed and focused by the work of art, and its story is ever subject to change, like the physical state of the artwork itself.” (Note 2)

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Note 1: The young rooster, later named Shinnecock for where they met in the Hills,  was a Paduan (English) aka Padovana (Italian) as was Galileo Galilei.

Note 2: “Looking at Dada” Authors Sarah Ganz Blythe, Edward D. Powers, Cassandra Heliczer, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) · 2006 page 14