Renowned photographer and artist Patty Carroll has spent much of the past 30 years examining women’s complicated relationships with domesticity. In this, her first “pure installation,” she creates a mesmerizing world populated by ceramic birds in color-saturated settings of floral fabric, artificial flowers and decorative household trinkets – the kinds of past-generation collectibles found in thrift shops and antique stores.  

A quilt-like array of approximately 250 panels, it symbolizes the nesting instincts of women whose homes are a sanctuary of pride and obsession. 

The installation wraps around the Library’s first-floor Genevieve Guldner Gallery, immersing its visitors. Some panels hide motion detectors that activate the sounds of various birds. 

Carroll, who keeps a studio in Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District, has drawn most of her acclaim as a photographer whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. 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.