[2][10] Using clay found in their pond, she fashioned the pipe,[2] which though she did not intend to become a potter, piqued her curiosity about how traditional Cherokee pottery was made.

[12] In 1973, Mitchell held her first public exhibition at the Tulsa Indian Trade Fair and met Clydia Nahwooksy (Cherokee.

Finding the book Sun Circles and Human Hands at the University of Arkansas of Fayetteville, she also learned the techniques used by precontact Mississippian artists to produce Eastern Woodlands pottery.

In the Southwest, motifs were typically angular with geometric shapes and stylized depictions from the natural world of animals and landmarks, placed on the pot in specific locations.

Designs of the Southeast tended to employ arches and swirls with realistic images of birds and human forms, with a free-flowing placement pattern on the vessel.

[15] Aiming to remain true to the techniques and designs of Southeastern pottery making and determined to preserve ancestral methods,[2][16] Mitchell began with low-firing clay.

[17] To shape the pot, she had to replicate stamping tools and wooden paddles based upon designs she had seen on pottery fragments in museums.

In 1982, Mitchell exhibited at the Frontier Folklife Festival in St. Louis, Missouri, and at The Night of the First Americans, held in Washington, DC, at the Kennedy Center.

[3] In 1983, Mitchell was invited to participate in an exhibition at the National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center in Manhattan.

In 1990, Mitchell was featured at a solo exhibition at the University of Arkansas and the following year won first, third, and honorable mention at the Intertribal Indian Market of Dayton, Ohio.

[2][23] In 1987, Jane Osti (Cherokee Nation), a student studying at Northeastern Oklahoma State University in Tahlequah, conducted an interview with Mitchell for a heritage course.

[3] In 2015, in honor of the 25th anniversary of the completion of Mitchell's bronze bust, it was removed from the Northeastern campus and placed on display at the W. W. Keeler Tribal Government Complex in Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

[23] The following year, a mural by Dan Mink depicting Mitchell and her work was erected in Vinita along West Canadian Avenue and South Wilson Street.