Mikayla Patton (Oglala Lakota) is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose creative work intimately engages materials such as recycled handmade paper, porcupine quills, glass beads, and natural elements to create sculptural objects and installations. Through her studio practice, Patton employs Lakota methodologies and adornment practices to explore themes of healing, growth, and renewal.
Patton holds a BFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is based in Pennsylvania. She has exhibited her work nationally at venues including Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, Landmark Arts in Lubbock, All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis, and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. In 2025, her work will be featured at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks, and the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville.
Patton’s work is included in public collections such as the Denver Art Museum, the Tia Collection, the Atka Lakota Museum, the North Dakota Museum of Art, and The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art. She is a 2024 Forge Project Fellow and a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow. Her studio practice has also been supported by the Ucross Foundation, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, First Peoples Fund, the Harpo Foundation, the Indian Arts Research Center, the RAiR Foundation, and her community. Patton is currently based in Pennsylvania.
I am interested in exploring Indigenous intimacies, personal narratives, and the transformative power of repurposing materials. Through the interplay of recycled paper-making and earth elements, I create sculptural objects that utilize my Lakota knowledge of being, adornment, and artistic methodologies. I aim to address shared themes of healing, growth, and renewal.
I collect and combine glass beads, porcupine quills, leather, fabric scraps, sinew, plant dyes, inks, and nylon thread. These materials are embedded, woven, and pierced through the paper, creating poetic fragments of adornment. The identifiable materials I use help to harness their energies, further emphasizing the connection between my work and the land it represents.
One recurring subject in my work is the concept of traveling trunks, reflecting on the functionality and protection of such utilitarian containers. My people once heavily relied on traveling across the Great Plains in connection with Maka (Mother Earth). These objects unify our relationship to land while acknowledging the complexities of self, creating a visual dialogue between vulnerability and protection.