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The life-sized statues, named Ethan and Violet by the two UC DAAP graduates, are on permanent display in the DAAP building. 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. He was not only set on permanent display in DAAP as part of the University of Cincinnati's Fine Art Collection, but he also became a beloved pop culture icon revered by students, faculty, and staff alike.

Ethan became the talk of DAAP almost immediately upon its installation. In perhaps the most oft-told story that has since become a college legend, Jay Chatterjee, a former DAAP dean and then-professor of architecture and planning, spotted what he perceived to be a student foolishly perched high above the busy thoroughfare early the next morning.

“You get down from there right now!” scolded Chatterjee as a crowd quickly formed. When the “student” failed to heed his warnings, Chatterjee marched into the college’s administrative offices nearby. “I wanted the staff in the office to help get that student down,” the now professor emeritus explained shortly about the incident. “I said, 'There’s this guy up there.’ They then told me to go out and take a second look.” Chatterjee isn’t the only one to do a double take at the convincing sculpture. Passing students have been heard to question Ethan, “How did you get up there?!”

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 in 2018. 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 in what will stand, at least in the college’s halls, as a love story for the ages.