by Rachel Richardson

513-556-5219

June 3, 2016

Alan Marrero had no idea of the legacy he’d leave when, on a Sunday morning in the winter of 2005, he stole up a ladder and placed a life-sized sculpture of himself on a high ledge in the University of Cincinnati’s Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) building.

Marrero, then a senior planning student, created and positioned the statue he dubbed “Ethan” as part of an Installation Art course that required students to create a sculpture and display it for one week in DAAP. He chose the location — 15 feet above the college’s main entryway — for the four distinct vantage points it offered of his artistic doppelganger, who appears to sit hunched in concentration over a laptop.

Since then, Ethan has taken on a life of his own, becoming not only a piece on permanent display in DAAP as part of the University of Cincinnati Fine Arts Collection, but a beloved pop culture icon revered by students, faculty and staff alike.

“Ethan is the patron saint of DAAP,” said Robert Probst, the college’s dean. “He’s a fixture here now.”

This month, Marrero returned to his alma mater — and he wasn’t alone. With him was “Violet,” a life-sized sculpture of another DAAP graduate, Mary Fialko, who married Marrero earlier this year. The true-to-life figure, clad in jeans and a black jacket, sits relaxed in a nearby corner sketching the seemingly oblivious college student, Ethan.

The story of Violet and how she came to join Ethan in the permanent installation is a testament not only to DAAP’s top-ranked design and architecture programs, but to its strong college alumni network that connected two unlikely graduates half a world away in what will stand, at least in the college’s halls, as a love story for the ages.