Betty Manygoats (1945- ) Betty Barlow

Betty Manygoats, Red Running into the Water clan, Diné Navajo Nation, Betty continues living on Navajo land. Betty is one of the best known of today's Navajo (Diné) potters. She is adept at making both large and small vessels and is eager to experiment with borrowed forms. Characteristic of her pottery is a distinctive surface texture produced by rubbing dried vessels with a piece of sandstone before they are fired. She is one of the few Western Reservation potters who apply paint to some of her appliquéd design motifs-particularly those depicting scenes from everyday life. As early as 1978 Betty introduced a horny toad motif to her pots, winning awards for her work at the annual Navajo exhibitions held at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff and at the Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremony in Gallup, New Mexico.

Betty Manygoats and her husband have ten children, many of them potters, and today they create wedding vases, bowls, and jugs decorated with the distinctive horned toads. Betty learned pottery making from her mother, Zonie Barlow.

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