Art + Belonging

The Mystery is the Meaning

Louise Captein
Miller Gallery
January 6 - March 1, 2026
Louise Captein, Visual Artist
January 29, 2026, 4p - 6p
Artist remarks begin at 4:30p
This Sabbatical exhibition features new work by visual artist Louise Captein, which results from a fresh approach to painting and collage that she has been developing over several years. The Mystery is the Meaning installation takes space as a medium and uses stacked grounds to “produce” shapes that result from apertures of every kind. The work reflects Captein's explorative process related to apperception—of the space without and the space within, and the paper-thin difference between them.

Can space be a medium?

MAYBE I CALL THEM LEAVES

leave as is
leave alone
leave out
let go, let be
leave nothing
leave something
leave empty
drop
self-leave
fall into, out of
leave a trace, leak
leave behind, to leave, leave,
leave
one leave after another
leave of my life
leaves, pages
leave is a verb
action verb
Richard Serra’s verb list
a manifesto of leaving

two leaves, three leaves, four leaves 
more leaves?
drop, soak, spill, spread, the color
spreads!
sag, swim, stick, smudge, smear, set, seek, see
show
form, float, fizzle, fuse
pause
thicken, take
give
accept
teach
no fuss

“Remember that the fool in the eyes of the gods….


and the fool in the eyes of man are very different. One who is entirely ignorant of the modes of Art in its revolution or the moods of thought in its progress, of the pomp of the Latin line or the richer music of the vowelled Greeks, of Tuscan sculpture or Elizabethan song may yet be full of the very sweetest wisdom. The real fool, such as the gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself. I was such a one too long. You have been such a one too long. Be so no more. Do not be afraid. The supreme vice is shallowness. Everything that is realised is right.

—Oscar Wilde, De Profundis


Louise Captein is an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Otterbein University who works primarily in oils and paper collage. She earned terminal degrees from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (1991) and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2017). She has taught studio art in higher education since the mid 1990’s – both in The Netherlands and the U.S – and joined the art and art history faculty at Otterbein in 2009. Captein has shown her work locally and nationally in group and solo exhibitions at Keny Galleries of Columbus, The Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Center Gallery, The Ohio State University’s Hopkins Hall Gallery, the Dublin Arts Council, and the Richard M. Ross Art Museum at Ohio Wesleyan University, among other venues. Her collages have been called “… quixotic in appearance yet meticulous in their approach to the formal elements of space, line, color and composition.”


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Current Exhibitions

  • Ukiyoe’s Living Legacy: The Yoshida Family Prints

    Frank Museum of Art
    August 20 – December 5, 2025
    In winter, the small world of ice patterns on the surfaces of shallow puddles creates an infinity of shapes and forms that are the subjects of David Stichweh’s photographs. Exploring this subject with the camera extends to further exploring during the process of printing. In printing an individual exposure, the subject is flipped, mirrored, reflected and turned. Combining these four perspectives into a single print creates new visual relationships with all the lines and shapes within the subject revealing a new awareness of pattern and design. This series is partially inspired by Stichweh’s extensive use of early cameras that showed the subject matter upside down and backwards. This exhibition is part of Otterbein’s Opening Doors to the World initiative.
  • URUSHI: exploring the chromacosm

    NHAT TRAN
    Fisher Gallery
    August 20 – December 5, 2025
    In winter, the small world of ice patterns on the surfaces of shallow puddles creates an infinity of shapes and forms that are the subjects of David Stichweh’s photographs. Exploring this subject with the camera extends to further exploring during the process of printing. In printing an individual exposure, the subject is flipped, mirrored, reflected and turned. Combining these four perspectives into a single print creates new visual relationships with all the lines and shapes within the subject revealing a new awareness of pattern and design. This series is partially inspired by Stichweh’s extensive use of early cameras that showed the subject matter upside down and backwards. This exhibition is part of Otterbein’s Opening Doors to the World initiative.
  • The Mystery is the Meaning

    Louise Captein
    Miller Gallery
    January 6 – March 1, 2026
    In winter, the small world of ice patterns on the surfaces of shallow puddles creates an infinity of shapes and forms that are the subjects of David Stichweh’s photographs. Exploring this subject with the camera extends to further exploring during the process of printing. In printing an individual exposure, the subject is flipped, mirrored, reflected and turned. Combining these four perspectives into a single print creates new visual relationships with all the lines and shapes within the subject revealing a new awareness of pattern and design. This series is partially inspired by Stichweh’s extensive use of early cameras that showed the subject matter upside down and backwards. This exhibition is part of Otterbein’s Opening Doors to the World initiative.