Alice Cling grew up in her mother's hogan (a Navajo dwelling), where she made pottery and helped on the family homestead (Chuck and Jan Rosenak, Museum of American Folk Art Encyclopedia, 1990). She builds her pots by hand, winding strips of clay into coils to form the body. Cling was the first Navajo potter to polish her pots using a smooth river stone instead of the traditional corncob, and creates the distinctive red color with a special clay slip made by the Walapai tribe (Chuck and Jan Rosenak, The People Speak: Navajo Folk Art, 1994).