BUFFALO, N.Y. -- If you head down to Buffalo's Canalside, chances are you'll see plenty of people waiting to take their picture with Shark Girl. But the artist had other ideas in mind when she was created.

She’s half-shark and half-girl, but she has garnered a whole lot of attention in two short years at Buffalo’s Canalside.

“People know that she's there. We've seen that she's made it on to travel blogs and people come into the region and into the city looking for her,” said Aaron Ott, Albright Knox public art curator.

Ott first noticed Shark Girl along the Ohio River in Cincinnati and thought it would be a great interactive piece in the Queen City.

“It's fun and it encourages people to have fun with it,” said Ott.

Artist Casey Riordan Millard says she first drew Shark Girl in 2004. She had a fear of sharks and pools as a child, and when she started feeling anxious as an adult, she felt that turning that anxiety into an object soothed her. She hoped that by placing her near along Cincinnati’s waterfront, it would have a similar effect for others.

“The intent was that she actually faced the water, and that you sit with her, and you look at the water and you sort of just take a quiet moment just to ponder what's going on in your mind," said Millard.

But something strange happened as soon as the sculpture was placed in public for the first time in 2012.

“She was down there for five hours before people literally turned her around and then started using her as a photo opportunity, and the river became the backdrop,” said Millard.

Still, Millard says Shark Girl was hardly a hit in Cincinnati and that the hometown paper had to ask her for a photograph when the piece moved to Buffalo because they didn’t have one on file. She says she is in awe of how much fanfare it has now received.

“I can't believe it's happened. I'm just so happy for her that she's being taken care of. I guess because in my head, I think she's alive, so I'm so glad that she's got this life going on,” said Millard.

“We make it a point to talk to the locals at every bar we go to and Shark Girl was definitely one of the things on the list we had to go see," said one tourist. 

Millard is tickled as she thinks of Shark Girl’s evolution.

“She wasn't even intended to be a photo opportunity when she was created, and I love that people turned her into that. I think it's so delightful,” said Millard.