The artist created Smoke Signal in 1993 after being invited to participate in the Prix de West exhibition at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center in Oklahoma City. The bronze won the show’s Grand Purchase Prize.

“My father’s stories have inspired much of my work,” the artist wrote in a retrospective article for the National Academy of Western Art in 1993. “He told me how the Apaches would use smoke signals to warn each other when the enemy was nearby.”