Deeply Connected From the Start (1985

A Revelation

JUDY HUDSON I met her when she was six years old. Her cousin Anne Timpson was my best friend. Then we lost touch and I didn’t see her again until 1980. I went to a party with Robert Longo at his parents’ house on the North Fork. Sarah and Amos were there. I remember I looked at her and said, “You’re not Sukie Charlesworth?” We were instant best friends. She was pregnant and I was pregnant at the same time. We had our children together. She was able to pursue a career and assemble a group of work that had meaning and a cohesive idea in a way that was always attributed to men. She was incredibly selfassured. She didn’t worry about what other people thought if that got in the way of her own ideas and values. Sarah was incredibly focused on her work and career, but she always wanted children. And then she had these children and you saw this whole earth mother emerge.

MEL KENDRICK You couldn’t have imagined her having children, all the black and white clothes and the long cigarette holder. Being a mother changed Sarah immediately. It really humanized her. Even though we were acquaintances, we weren’t close until we had children. Our relationship started on a family-based thing more than on an art thing. Our oldest son, Max, was the same age as Nick. It was Amos and Sarah, Richard Price and Judy Hudson, Laurie and Tip Dunham, and us at that point. Mary, Sarah, and Judy were all pregnant at the same time.

MARY SALTER There was a big show at the Whitney where we were all together. Sarah and I were both pregnant. It was quite funny. We would just be these sort of beach balls bumping around. We were all different. But I think officially in everyone’s mind we were families together. There was a sense of a familial community. These families of children were close. They played with each other and, as life in New York would have it, they bounced up against each other.

We all drift apart because as we grow older our lives change. Our children run their own shows now. But in hard times, we still look to each other.

LAURIE SIMMONS She had become tame and more conventional by then. She liked her girlfriends, wanted to do her work, wanted family. Everyone had transitioned into a more stable place in the interest of making priorities in life about what was important. For me, it was my work, my relationship, and my children, and I feel like Mel Kendrick and Mary were right there, Judy was there, Sarah was there.

JUDY HUDSON Sarah loved being a mother. She was deeply connected right from the start. It was a revelation to her how happy it made her. She was completely blissed out talking about nursing and how it was a great experience of her life.

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Nicholas Tiger Poe; April 25, 1985.

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