Despite his busy schedule, Marrero made time to return to DAAP at least every other year to visit his creation, which quickly seemed to take on a persona of its own.

It wasn’t long before yellow Post-it notes penned by students began to litter the wall beneath the sculpture at the end of each semester, with messages from students pleading for help on finals or offering up quips and witticisms.

Please cancel my 8 a.m. studio. Please, Ethan

Dear Ethan: Please give me the motivation to actually get work done over the Reading Days.

Ethan, wish me luck on getting a co-op!

Dear Ethan: Please deliver unto us free art supplies.

Ethan: Please help calm the fears I have about becoming an unsuccessful artist.

At some point, a typed paper titled “The 7 Edicts of Ethan” appeared taped to the wall below the sculpture, detailing a set of commandments penned by the anonymous “High Priest of Ethan.”  The lighthearted proclamations admonish students to use the college’s Wi-Fi connection responsibly, respect the differences of others and to leave their prayers on non-wall-damaging sticky notes.

Probst said as many as 200 notes are now posted at the end of each semester and even some candle offerings are made in Ethan’s honor.

“It’s become a tradition,” he said about the Post-It prayers. “At the end of every semester we have to clean the stickies off the wall. The students just love him.”

Sleepless in Seattle

Fialko wasn’t looking for love when, on a cold winter’s night in 2009, Marrero sidled up to her on the dance floor at a house party thrown by a mutual friend and fellow DAAP graduate.

Although she had also graduated from DAAP, in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in architecture, she and Marrero had never crossed paths on campus. Fialko, in Cincinnati visiting family for the holidays, now called Seattle home after moving there to attend graduate school.

“Alan was trying to ask me questions about my life, and I refused to answer because I literally never thought I’d see him again. I said, ‘Let’s just dance,’” Fialko said with a laugh.

The two parted ways, not making much of the chance encounter. Then, just two months later, they ran into each other again, this time at a bar in Seattle where Marrero had just moved in a sudden decision to pursue professional opportunities.

“It was pretty shocking,” said Fialko. “It was all mutual friends from DAAP who brought us together both times in Cincinnati and Seattle.”

This time, sparks flew. Marrero said he felt drawn to the smart and ambitious blonde-haired beauty who earned graduate degrees in architecture and real estate finance and works as real estate development manager at a commercial firm.

Fialko, in turn, was smitten with the genuinely nice guy who showed so much artistic talent, especially in the elaborate and high-end custom light installations he creates as part of his role with Graypants, a Seattle-based studio known for its architectural installations and public artworks.

The two soon began dating, bonding over their experiences as fellow DAAP graduates among a wider circle of mutual friends, many of them also DAAP alumni.

Joined together

As the couple made plans for a February 2016 wedding in Seattle, Marrero’s friends back in Cincinnati began hatching a plan to provide Ethan with a companion in Fialko’s likeness.

“One of the ideas we came up with was creating a Mary figure and installing it covertly,” explained friend Adam Gerhardstein. “We thought it would be wonderful for the two of them to be joined together on the shelf as they were joined together in life.”

The plan had just one wrinkle: “We quickly realized that none of us had artistic talent,” Gerhardstein said with a laugh.

Instead, the group began writing letters to DAAP officials, lobbying for a companion for the beloved sculpture. The idea proved an easy sell for Dean Probst.

“Ethan is a talking point for everybody who walks by; he leaves an impression. For me it was important to keep that,” he explained.  “It’s a sculpture with such a human emotional element and people want to interact with it.”

When Marrero returned home in December 2015 to visit family over the holidays, his friends set the the plan in motion during an at-home bachelor party.

The daylong festivities took the group to DAAP, where Marrero's friends surprised him with a letter from the college expressing interest in commissioning the second sculpture.

“He was floored and thought it was the greatest thing ever,” said Gerhardstein.

Marrero approached Fialko with the idea: Did she want her likeness preserved at her alma mater for years to come?

“I thought it was awesome,” Fialko said.  “Of course, it was weird. Ethan’s kind of weird in a good way.

But, she added, “I know how excited Alan was to do this, and it makes him feel validated that this senior project idea he had has become such a big thing.”

After meeting with Probst, Marrero quickly drew up a proposal that included not only a new sculpture of Fialko, but also a redesign of Ethan. The original Ethan sculpture, with its face created out of plaster of Paris and body fashioned from chicken wire wrapped around a crude wooden frame, had begun to show its age, he said.

Marrero partnered with KeseyPollack, a Seattle-based interactive design team that creates figurative sculptures made of wax, among other materials, to mold and paint the hyper-realistic faces for the renovated Ethan sculpture and his companion, which Fialko named “Violet.”

Over the course of a week in May, Marrero fashioned new bodies for the two sculptures out of mannequin parts, designed both to make them appear more natural and for durability.

The now-married couple unveiled the permanent installation at a May 27 gathering attended by their friends, family and DAAP faculty and staff.

“I hope that Ethan and Violet last as long as there are students in these halls,” Marrero said, looking up at the sculptures joined together, at last, in the college where it all began.