Elijah Naranjo Smith is a son of Dolly Naranjo and a brother of Jody Naranjo. He has been working with clay since 1999. In 2003 he won the Ron & Susan Dubin Native American Artist Fellowship Award from the School for Advanced Research. That allowed him to study the designs in the IARC collection and work on pottery in the SAR studios. He works with traditional clays and firing methods, producing brown, black and red combination pots with sgraffito designs.