At some point during our conversation earlier this month, the 89-year-old artist Audrey Flack mentioned to me that she was wearing a t-shirt she had bought at the Museum of the City of New York. It read, “Feminist AF,” she told me. “When I first saw it, I thought, ‘AF, oh, that’s for Audrey Flack,’” she laughed. “I couldn’t believe they knew my initials!”

I already knew that I loved Audrey Flack after watching Queen of Hearts: Audrey Flack, a documentary about her career by Oscar award-winning director Deborah Shaffer and co-director Rachel Reichman. (The film, which was released on November 13, is currently available online.) These feelings of love were only confirmed during the hour that I spent on the phone with her — me, at my desk in Savannah, Georgia, and Flack in her studio in the Hamptons where, among other things, she worried about where she would get the COVID-19 vaccine, and gave me advice about my wild 4-year-old daughter, who frequently tells me she wants to be a boy. (“Women are wonderful, but I always wanted to be a boy, too, because they had more fun,” Flack told me.)