Marco Cochrane
Marco Cochrane is a self-taught American sculptor born in Venice, Italy in 1962 to American artist parents and raised in Berkeley, California. He is best known for The Bliss Project, a trilogy of monumental steel sculptures that have become some of the most iconic artworks to emerge from the Burning Man community.
In 2007, Cochrane’s first trip to Burning Man inspired him to enlarge his work to monumental proportions. Together with his wife and creative partner Julia Whitelaw and dozens of volunteers known as the Bliss Crew, he spent a decade creating three colossal sculptures of singer and dancer Deja Solis, who chose her own pose and expression for each piece.
Bliss Dance (2010), 40 feet tall with 3,000 colored LEDs, debuted at Burning Man before moving to Treasure Island in San Francisco. It now stands permanently at The Park on the Las Vegas Strip. Truth is Beauty (2013), rising 55 feet and weighing 13,000 pounds with 2,500 LEDs, is permanently installed overlooking the BART station in San Leandro, California. R-Evolution (2015), a breathtaking 47-foot, 32,000-pound kinetic sculpture requiring 55,000 welds, features motors that simulate slow breathing — Cochrane’s only kinetic work. R-Evolution has been installed at Embarcadero Plaza in San Francisco since 2025.
Cochrane’s work carries a profound message: haunted by the abduction and assault of a childhood friend when he was just seven years old, he creates sculptures that celebrate “the feminine energy and power that results when women feel free and safe.”
In 2018, an 18-foot version of Truth is Beauty was featured at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in the landmark exhibition No Spectators: The Art of Burning Man, which traveled to the Cincinnati Art Museum and Oakland Museum of California.
Gallery of Reality captured Bliss Dance using photogrammetry — hundreds of photographs processed into a precise 3D model — preserving this iconic artwork in digital form for viewers to explore from any angle.