It’s said that at bottom, art is little more than a reflection of our self and a reflection of the other. But if this is so, then Heather Rowe has carried this idea to another dimension.

Her “Trouble Everyday” installation at the University of Michigan Museum of Art reflects the belief that seeing one’s self in public art is as much an artistic statement as any other aesthetic expression. In this instance, the UMMA’s Irving Stenn, Jr. Family Project Gallery has been turned over to Rowe’s sculpture/installation, which shines brightly in every direction.

This New Haven, Connecticut-based mixed-media specialist has produced a gallery installation consisting of a dozen modular units whose synthesis of carpet, lumber, glass and metals creates a fantastic number of diagonal perspectives that bounce their reflective likenesses throughout the gallery.

Perhaps akin, spiritually, to a highfalutin fun house, Rowe’s “Trouble Everyday” is indeed as entertaining as anything likely to be seen in a penny arcade.

Jacob Proctor, UMMA associate curator of modern and contemporary art, says in his “Trouble Everyday” gallery statement, “Rowe has described (her) installations as a series of frames in space, each (frame) containing fragments of a story that are revealed as the viewer passes through and around her work.”

Rowe’s patchwork glasswork dazzles the eye as much as it tickles the intellect. And it’s the rare combination of self-portraiture reflected through the gaze of others that accomplishes these feats simultaneously.

Walking in (and around) the UMMA Project Gallery, it can’t help but be noticed that the interior walls initially seem a bit skewed. Off-kilter reflections will tend to do this. Yet it’s only when walking through Rowe’s modular units — with their diagonal wedges of glass throwing light at crisscrossing angles — that the installation becomes alive. And it’s especially activated when the gallery has varied groups winding their way through its many carefully laid out, intricate mazes.

Rowe’s curiously titled “Trouble Everyday” — which ends up being no trouble at all — may be the only work of art we’re going to see this season that wholeheartedly subscribes to the timeworn cliché of the more, the merrier. Because at heart it’s a celebration of mingling self and other that warrants more than enough curiosity for you to want to return.

John Carlos Cantú is a free-lance writer who reviews art for AnnArbor.com.

“Heather Rowe: Trouble Everyday” continues through January 3 at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 525 South State Street. Museum hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Thursday-Friday; and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. For information, call 734-763-UMMA.