Patterns of thought: Hedda Sterne: a founding member of the New York School and the last surviving painter of its first generation, Hedda Sterne, now 96, discusses many phases of her life and career. Her work is currently on view in a traveling retrospective.(Interview)

Like many others, I have been curious about Hedda Sterne, the lone woman in the hat standing in the last row of the formally staged photograph of 15 New York School artists who became known as "The Irascibles" when this image was published in Life magazine on Jan. 15, 1951. Now, a traveling exhibition, "Uninterrupted Flux: Hedda Sterne," organized for the Krannert Art Museum by Sarah L. Eckhardt, together with its accompanying catalogue, offers a detailed look at the artist's long and varied career. Initially identified with the Surrealists, then the Abstract Expressionists,…