Nearly half a century’s work in photography and art has brought Patty Carroll to the Central Library’s first-floor Genevieve Guldner Gallery. There, through her exhibition Flora and Fauxna, she immerses visitors in a world populated by ceramic birds in color-saturated settings of floral fabric, artificial flowers and decorative household trinkets.  

The dense quilt of 14-by-14-inch panels is her latest rumination on women and their relationship to home, invoking nesting instincts and the home as a sanctuary of pride and obsession. 

Speaking from the gallery, Carroll discusses the exhibition’s inspiration, creation, and context and explores the intersection of art and crafts. Flora and Fauxna remains on display at the Library through August 15. 

Carroll, who keeps a studio in the Crossroads Arts District, has drawn most of her renown as a photographer whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally – from the Art Institute of Chicago to the White Box Museum of Art in Beijing, China, and the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain. Selections from her works are part of the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, among other places.  

She also spent more than 40 years teaching photography.