Art Cody, Haungooah

Santa Clara Pueblo

Art Cody (1943-1985) was a Kiowa man who met and married Martha Suazo of Santa Clara Pueblo in Fort Worth, Texas. She was there for college, he was stationed there with the US Air Force. When he was discharged, he moved to his wife's home at Santa Clara. There he learned the Santa Claran methods of the traditional art of making pottery.

Art later went to school at Cameron College in Lawton, OK, the University of New Mexico and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, graduating from IAIA with an Associate of Fine Arts degree. He learned pottery making, silversmithing, jewelry making, painting, stone sculpture and bronze making along the way.

Art specialized in producing small seed pots decorated with very fine sgraffito designs. As he once said, "I can make twice the amount of money by making miniatures. There's a bigger demand for miniatures, and they're not that time consuming, because there's a smaller area to work with."

Martha was walking among the ruins at Puyé one day when she was struck and killed by a bolt of lightning. Art remarried a year later but a year after that, he, his new wife and their new baby were killed in a one-car accident. Martha and Art's son, Dean Haungooah, carries on their fine tradition, although Dean now lives on the Navajo Nation.