145 Columbus, OH: Marketing and Art

A lone, petite woman walked in front of the painting. She had spent a long time in front of each one in the gallery. She wore a green-ribbed lightweight sweater. Barrettes pinned her dark hair to the side of her head above big brown eyes and a roundish chin. To my question whether people in Columbus were isolated like this, she mused, "I don't think that they are 'cause this looks like it's industrial. I'm studying marketing, and we had an assignment to walk through and note which images spoke to us. This picture is very cold. Well, the main thing about Hopper is he painted very, very cold pictures. Gosh, how cold.

"I thought basically that she was maybe spiritual, searching. I think she's searching, and it's not there. She has a complete isolation, lack of decoration in her room. No flowers. The walls are so bare. You expect to see this beautiful paradise outside the window, and you see this industrial city. It's sad. There's not beautiful puffy billowy clouds. It's absolutely straight to the point. It's kind of a world of loneliness.

"About two weeks ago, I met this guy at a job interview. He said, 'It is really hard to make friends here and kind of hard to get past.' But actually I didn't feel that way. Ohio's a really nice state. But I'm a student, so I meet people in class. But there's another guy that just moved here a month ago from Africa, and he said that he thinks Columbus people are very isolated, that they're not very outgoing. It was kind of awkward to hear that people had that response or that feeling. 'Cause I love this city! But it seems like some people may feel that way."