Call it destiny or call it serendipity, either way, a chance encounter in a tiny town on the island of Sardinia led to Swedish photographer Helga Jonsson’s current exhibit at Hastings-Cone Gallery.

Jonsson, who runs a small complex with an art gallery, restaurant and bakery plus a botanical garden, lives for half the year in her hometown of Gotland City, on a Swedish island in the Baltic Sea. The other six months of the year she resides in Cuglieri, a rural town of 2,800 people on the western side of Sardinia.

Megan Hastings and Adam Cone run a small complex with an art gallery, restaurant and bakery plus a bar in their hometown of Vashon, on an island in Puget Sound. They first visited Cuglieri in 2007, and have returned many times ever since.

Jonsson, Hastings and Cone met several years ago at a party in the Cuglieri countryside during Pasquetta, a festive celebration the day after Easter. They quickly uncovered the uncanny parallel in their lives. In a recent interview, the trio bantered reminiscences back and forth.

“We met on an island, Sardinia, and when we started talking, I realized my parents and I run a place like Megan and Adam’s Snapdragon, with a gallery and small restaurant and bakery on an island in the Baltic Sea,” Jonsson said, with her blue eyes sparkling beneath her auburn pixie cut.

Cone, taking a break from baking, said with a laugh, “We were all like, ‘What?’”

Hastings added, “It was this funny connection, and we just hit it off.”

In the Hastings-Cone Gallery attached to Snapdragon, Jonsson’s photographs offer a candid peek into life in Cuglieri. Black and white images show locals sitting on benches with an ancient stone wall as a backdrop; colorful photos reveal a Mediterranean deep-blue sky above whitewashed buildings; and a series Jonsson took portray the town’s traditional Easter celebration.

“Easter in Italy is really a big deal,” Hastings said, “and it is one of the most beautiful times.”

A cathedral called Santa Maria Della Neve crowns the top of the hill overlooking the town and six small churches. Every day during the week before Easter, a large procession starts at one of the churches and ends at the cathedral.

“Four people carry these big, beautiful Madonnas, and people chant around them. They all walk up to the big cathedral, and it is one of the most stunning things you could see,” Hastings said. “It is just amazing.”

Amazing seems to be the operative word between these three friends. An amazing, fortuitous meeting between strangers with amazingly similar lives or is the hand of fate sculpting the amazingly improbable?

“It really is in a way,” Cone said, “or serendipity or maybe just to be present with oneself so that you can listen to those funny kind of harmonies and go with it. It’s the things around the corners that you can’t see, but you have to believe in.”

“Like Helga,” laughed Hastings. “And here she is now, on Vashon, with her beautiful photographs.”

Jonsson’s exhibit, “The Spirit of Sardinia,” will run through the end of the month at Hastings-Cone Gallery.