After WWII ended, he legally changed his name to his pueblo name, Popovi Da, which means "Red Fox" in the Tewa language.

[9] As an artist, Popovi Da has been described as an "extraordinary experimentalist" who "stood in a moment between a revival of the past and the innovations of the future."

[4] He began inlaying turquoise into his pots in the 1960s, and also produced a series of works using scraffito and shallow carving to incise designs on the surfaces.

He developed a technique of creating black and sienna ombre-like color fades by selectively shielding parts of his pots during the oxidation firing process.

[7] An archive of his papers, reviews, exhibition catalogs and other ephemera is held in the collection of Smithsonian Institution.