Nahohai, Randy

Randy Nahohai was born into the Eagle Clan at Zuni Pueblo in 1957. He sat in on a few of Jennie Laate‘s pottery classes at Zuni High School while he was there. However, he says he really learned the fine art of making pottery the traditional Zuni way from his mother, Josephine Nahohai. Josephine herself had learned from her own mother and from attending Daisy Hooee‘s classes at Zuni High.

Daisy Hooey was Nampeyo of Hano‘s granddaughter. She had worked directly with Nampeyo for several years, forming her own pots and painting some of Nampeyo’s. Before she took the job at Zuni High she studied and worked and turned herself into a consummate Zuni potter. Then she stepped into the classroom. Randy came along after Daisy had retired and Jennie Laate was teaching the ceramics classes.

After graduating from high school Randy attended the Institute of American Indian Arts and studied ceramics. He began actively producing pottery around 1983.

In 1985 Josephine Nahohai was awarded the Katrin H. Lamon Fellowship from the School of American Research. The stipend with that fellowship allowed her to take her sons Milford and Randy, and Randy’s wife Rowena, with her to the East Coast to study old Zuni and Hawikuh pottery. Sisters Irene Nahohai and Priscilla Tsethlikai stayed behind at Zuni.

The pottery they went to study was in the collections at the Museum of the American Indian and at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. Randy and Milford learned a lot on that trip and were inspired to reproduce many of the historic shapes, designs and paints they’d seen.

Randy, Milford and Josephine shared a booth at the Santa Fe Indian Market for years, beginning in 1986. He became active as a potter in the marketplace in 1983 and mostly made polychrome and fine line white ware and orange ware: jars, cornmeal bowls, ollas, Corn Maiden sculptures and clay flutes in the shape of a frog. He also made bronzes and pen & ink drawings and worked with pastels.

Randy’s favorite designs were deer with heart lines, long-haired katsinas, flute players, frogs, dragonflies and Kolowisi (the Zuni water serpent). He shared his pottery studio, Nahohai Clayworks, with Milford and they often collaborated with each other and with their mother. Randy passed on in 2016.