Alan Houser, who came to create many things people had never seen before, was born Allan Capron Haozous on June 30, 1914. Ha-oz-ous, in the Apache language, describes the sound, the sensation of pulling a plant from the earth and the point at which the earth gives way. His middle name, Capron, came from Captain Allyn K. Capron of the U.S. 7th Cavalry at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Capron was the first Army officer to die in the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Renowned as both an exceptional artist and educator by this time, Houser jumped at the chance to join the faculty of the newly created Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, he set up the sculpture department and honed his status as one of America’s foremost, modernist sculptors. Within the studios at IAIA and the ones he built for himself, Houser chipped away at popular conceptions of what sculpture should be. In the process, he transformed Native American art from the parochial to the monumental.