In the late 1970s, when William Anastasi started riding the New York City subway on his way to meet avant-garde composer John Cage for daily games of chess, the artist would close his eyes and rest two pencil points on top of a blank sheet of paper supported by a drawing tablet on his lap. The motion of the swaying, jerking train would determine the path of the pencil marks on the paper. This was the beginning of the artist’s ongoing series of Subway Drawings. Anastasi, who has also embraced the role of chance and external physical forces in sculpture and painting, described this unorthodox drawing practice as “a form of meditation.”