379 - Tatanka na Zintkala

This mural is titled Tatanka na Zintkala. My name is Shauna Elk. I am a mother, daughter, sister, wife, Dakota and Lakota immersion teacher, and quillwork instructor. I am an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Oyate.
I learned to do beadwork at a very young age, my father had signed me up to take a course in fourth grade and it helped me with my anxiety. I have used beadwork to cope with the world since. I learned quillwork when I was in college and have fallen in love with it. My dad had talked about the quillwork that was in our family for years, which was sold by a relative to a private collector. I made it my own personal goal to learn quillwork
and eventually try to create those pieces again.

Kaitlin Ziesmer is a fine art painter and illustrator working out of Denver and has been featured in numerous exhibits across Denver and throughout the country. She makes brightly colored, poppy paintings that typically incorporate/combine human and natural elements with nostalgia. With a light-hearted sense of humor, she approaches art with a “it’s for fun” attitude.
“I like having a very clean, cut and paste approach to imagery. In my work, it’s so fun focusing on recognizable characters from popular culture. People have such a positive and nostalgic response to them...often following up with a response of a suggestion on what I should do next.
It really creates a dialogue, and there’s something so gratifying being able to make things that you know your friends will dig. Repurposing them into this new, often female body, is my way of injecting myself into it all...quite literally because I’m using myself as the model ninety percent of the time.