GD: Your work feels so sculptural. Do you have favorite sculptors?
AC: The people who influenced me are minimalist sculptors, mainly working in the West, who really have thought about their art not as a piece in a museum but as an environment. Like Donald Judd, who was constantly asking what is the boundary between a sculpture and the place where it sits? Robert Irwin, early in his career, suggested space by running a violet chain-link fence through eucalyptus trees so it becomes part of the landscape. Or Walter De Maria, who did The Lightning Field—a grid of poles 20 feet high in the high desert of New Mexico.
GD: Any favorite landscapes?
AC: One of the most powerful spaces I’ve been to is the Pantheon in Rome. I’ve seen people standing there with tears in their eyes. Also Delphi (in Greece), which is a ruined landscape but also the most sacred, spiritual place. You can feel a sense of power, a primitive, deep connection. I do think that the ancient people picked places to put their work because they were sacred. So that’s on the woo-woo level.
But then think about Paley Park in New York. What could be a better place? Small, small, but a little urban oasis with its water wall and the canopy of the trees.
Andrea Cochran’s propensity for clean lines, geometric balance, and subtle colors is on display in this garden at a residence in Atherton, California, including a large stone fireplace that forms an essential part of an outdoor living room.
