Billed as an exploration of the recesses of the human mind, Nancy Andrews’ show on display at the Blum Gallery at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor is, despite its apparently disparate parts, a single large contemplative installation.

Stepping through the main door, a visitor is immediately confronted with a wall and a low ceiling, the confined space illuminated with two spare, clear glass bulbs. Nine paintings, black on white, featuring amorphous shapes surrounding single human eyeballs form a perfect grid. Trapped by the image, there is no place to move but to the right. There, high on the wall, a video projects jittery shapes containing moving lips on a background that constantly changes both in color and sometimes to no discernable tint at all. In that mode the disembodied lips scurry across the flat surface like farmhouse mice in a kitchen when a light is turned on late at night.

In the center of the room, flat on the floor, are four fabric installations, again ordered in a perfect grid, each illuminated by a single shaded bulb suspended from the ceiling. Compared to the monochrome images on the wall, these rectangular rugs are alive with color, applied like a Technicolor version of the old black-and-white Rorschach test awaiting some unsuspecting patient’s Freudian interpretations.

Other paintings, a shelf containing tiny cardboard houses (only one with window and door openings representing a face), and another holding organic knitted shapes containing small convex mirrors that distort the reflection of the viewer, and series of video monitors are strategically place around the walls. With one exception, the expected shape of the normally rectangular monitors is altered by being fitted into new cases that have only a single, large circular opening. On one, small oval shapes quiver like a gigantic mitochondria stripped from its cellular surroundings. Another features clocks and watches along with animation of an early Telstar satellite orbiting the Earth.

Above it all, at the highest point of the room, an underexposed video clip of tree branches and leaves flickers almost unnoticeable. The only thing missing from the tableau is “Twilight Zone” narrator Rod Serling, resplendent in black and white, saying his memorable line, “Submitted for your approval … ”

So where to start?

In a room full of flickering candles, who knows which one will ultimately attract the moth?  In this case however, viewers are drawn,

via various paths, through the metaphorical researcher’s maze to pause at a small film looping on a green-tinted monitor in a far corner. It’s from a 1950s horror film of a scientist talking about the human brain and writing the words “Fear, Rage, Love.” on a chalkboard. A large white laboratory rat is seen running through a wire cage maze. Interspersed with the stock footage are flashes of some of the paintings in other parts of the exhibit.

Perhaps one of the most fundamental functions of the human mind is to seek order from chaos. Readily recognizable patterns calm and reassure. Entropy may not be able to be reversed, but for even for a brief sliver of cosmic time, we each hold the power to arrange the world around us and delay the inexorable march to disorder and oblivion.

The individual images and audio and video clips in Ms. Andrews’ exhibit appear, at first glance, disjointed and disquieting. There is nothing familiar or comforting about free-floating eyeballs and lips superimposed on black teardrops. Even the shape of video monitors, with the exception of that one in the corner, have been changed by the artist from rectangular to round to turn the commonplace into the unfamiliar.

It takes awhile, however, for the mind to transcend the disquiet of the individual pieces and find the reassurance of familiar patterns in the perfect geometry of their arrangement, and in the reappearance of images from the first part of the show, now familiar, in displays at its farthest reaches.

And, floating above it all, in the darkest part of the windowless room, above the plane of human existence and time itself, is an unwavering image of nature, seemingly positioned where only those willing to explore the entire concept will notice.

Based on the coast of Maine, Ms. Andrews teaches video-making, animation, time-based arts, and film studies at COA. She works in hybrid filmic forms combining storytelling, documentary, puppetry, and research through the films, drawings, props, and objects she creates. Her characters and narratives are synthesized from various sources, including history, movies, popular educational materials, and autobiography.

In addition to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Ms. Andrews has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from numerous foundations and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Her work has been presented by the Museum of Modern Art, Pacific Film Archive, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, Jerusalem Film Festival, Flaherty Seminar, Nova Cinema Bioscoop in Brussels, and Taiwan International Animation Festival, among other venues.

Blum gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. “Beauty Sleep,” runs through Sept. 25.

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