Meet the Board: Lauren Palmer

Lauren Palmer stands at the intersection of art, ancestry, and community care, a place where creativity becomes a form of healing, connection, and reclamation.

An Afro-Indigenous, Afro-Latina multidisciplinary artist from Oklahoma City, she moves through her work with intention, leading brave movements that challenge fractures within communities and invite others to reconnect, reclaim, and rematriate.

Inspired by the matriarchs who paved the way before her, Lauren walks with reverence and gratitude. Her artistry reflects familial origin—through floral installations that honor memory and resilience, she transforms spaces into living, breathing testaments to ancestral strength. Her recent site-specific works—Send Flowers to Greenwood, Send Flowers to MMIW, and Send Flowers to Survivors—bear witness to histories that demand remembrance and care.

Lauren’s creativity is not bound to a single medium. She is a floral designer, heirloom beadwork artist, musician, community archivist, educator, and advocate. She is an owner and Principal Designer of The Wild Mother Creative Studio, a floral design house in Oklahoma City, where her she and her team create living art from natural materials. Some of her most recent work include set decoration contributions on Tulsa King (season 1) and Sterlin Harjo’s The Lowdown (season 1) under the set dec leadership of Tafv Sampson. She is also founder of For Our Healing, which powers projects like The Ancilla Project, Black History is Happening curriculum and podcast, and Lay of the Land.

Lauren shares that she was inspired by Culture Hub before becoming a regular community member within its walls. “That vision is what first drew me to Culture Hub,” she says. Over time, the organization became a deeply meaningful space for her, one that embodies reciprocity, care, and knowledge flowing in all directions. Today, Lauren serves on its Board of Directors, guiding its mission forward while honoring those who came before her.

Education and ancestry weave seamlessly in Lauren’s life. With a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Music from Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, she has cultivated both a scholarly and embodied understanding of culture. Her Afro-Indigenous identity, with Gullah, Malagasy, Choctaw, and Mexican origins, grounds her in the stories of her people. “To be Afro-Indigenous in Indian Country is to be aware of my cultural intersectionality—one foot here, one foot there,” she explains. “It’s a delicate and elegant identity that represents all of the strong mothers and fathers I come from.”

Leadership, for Lauren, is a practice of presence and care, a lesson she first glimpsed as a teenager when she met cellist Yo-Yo Ma at a masterclass. Following the class, a line of eager students formed, all in hopes of meeting the living legend. Lauren, standing at the very end of the line was denied a moment with the prolific artist by an event coordinator. However, she was noticed by Ma, who welcomed her forward, spoke with kindness, and even let her touch his practice cello. That brief encounter left an enduring impression: leadership is gentle, deliberate, and fully present.

Art, creativity, and community are inseparable threads in Lauren’s life, forming what she calls a “three-strand braid.” Art has been both a “bright light during dark days and a soft place to land when the world feels chaotic.” Creativity fuels her work, but community gives it purpose. “As the eldest of three sisters, I’ve experienced firsthand the power of relational medicine,” she reflects. “To me, art, creativity, and community are like sisters themselves.”

Looking forward, Lauren sees ancestral language preservation as a critical priority. She has begun her own journey learning Chahta Anumpa, knowing that “vocabulary becomes phrases, phrases become sentences, and sentences become stories”—just as Culture Hub nurtures knowledge to grow and flourish across generations.

Through her art, her leadership, and her unwavering commitment to community care, Lauren Palmer embodies a vision of connection, reclamation, and care—inviting all who encounter her work to walk alongside her in honoring the past, tending the present, and imagining a more compassionate future.

Please join us in welcoming Lauren as a member of Culture Hub’s inaugural Board of Directors.