Marco Cochrane (born 1962) is an American sculptor born in Venice, Italy, best known for his large-scale steel sculptures of nude women. Early and personal life Cochrane was born in Venice to American artists and raised in Berkeley, California. When he was seven years old, a friend, then aged nine, was abducted and raped; Cochrane recalls "[m]y mom told me about it in way too much gory detail. It really shocked me," adding he was also surprised when "nobody did anything — and nobody ever talked about it again" and wondered "if he had realized she was a person, he wouldn't have done it." Cochrane is self-taught in sculpture and married to Julia Whitelaw. The Bliss Project Bliss Dance, Truth is Beauty and R-Evolution collectively form The Bliss Project, a trilogy of steel sculptures. The model for each piece was the singer and dancer Deja Solis. Cochrane met Solis in 2006 and asked her to model for a work in progress. During their fifth collaboration, Solis advanced the idea for the pose that would be sculpted as Bliss Dance. A three-stage process was used to create each final piece: Cochrane sculpts Solis in clay as she holds the pose, and then casts a -scale plaster model from the clay Cochrane sculpts an intermediate clay model enlarged by 3× over the plaster model using a pantograph Cochrane and volunteers weld a final steel model enlarged by 3× over the intermediate clay using a pantograph The finished sculptures use steel rod and tubing connected by steel balls for the structure, finished with a stainless steel mesh skin lit by LEDs. The first piece, entitled Bliss Dance (2010), reaches in height and, after being introduced at Burning Man, was given a location on San Francisco's Treasure Island, where it remained until May 18, 2015. Bliss Dance later moved permanently to The Park, an entertainment venue near T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip, which opened on April 4, 2016. It weighs more than . Truth is Beauty (2013) which rises to and weighs , was first shown at Burning Man in 2013. A smaller scale piece by Cochrane will be showcased at the Renwick Gallery. It was a response to the rape and abduction of a childhood friend, and moved to a permanent location at the San Leandro Tech Campus in the fall of 2016, where it is visible from the San Leandro